Category Archives: Gun Fun

.22 LR ammo via Widener’s

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Last month I received an email from Widener’s. This is the important part of our conversation:

I’m reaching out to see if you’d be interested in reviewing some ammo on blog.joehuffman.org. Product reviews are an opportunity to increase website traffic and build a stronger relationship with your audience.

Think of your readers for a minute. They likely see ads for ammunition placed by manufacturers every time they go online. Wouldn’t it be better if they were receiving real information from a trusted resource like your website? Given your experience in the industry, I thought you would be interested in receiving some free ammunition to review.

If you are interested in receiving some free ammo for an unbiased product review. I’m sure we can find a caliber or two to send your way. 

If there’s anything I can help you with, just let me know. Thanks!

—

What type of ammo do you have in mind?

My primary calibers are .22LR (Steel Challenge type matches and practice), .40 S&W (Steel Challenge and USPSA matches) , .223 Remington (precision rifle out to 500 yards), and .300 Win Mag (precision rifle out to 700 yards).

—

Thank you for the fast reply. That sounds great, below is a $250 gift card code for you to use to get started. After you add items to your cart, enter the gift card code and the website will walk you through the rest of the checkout process. Orders are processed through a secure server and fulfilled remotely by our warehouse, so your blogger identity remains anonymous to us.

I ordered 1,000 rounds of CCI Mini-Mags 22 LR 40 Grain CPRN and 500 rounds of Federal American Eagle Suppressor 22 LR 45 Grain CPRN. That was on a Tuesday. The following Tuesday the ammo arrived at my underground bunker in remote Idaho:

image 

I was a little concerned because the package had been damaged in transit. I’ve opened ammo shipments that looked similar to this and found hundreds of rounds rattling around loose in the box.

This time the interior packaging was more than adequate and the ammo was contained:

image

image

I’ve fired many thousands of rounds of the Mini-Mags with excellent results. Because of the high reliability it’s the only .22 ammo I use in competition. Hence, I didn’t bother to test it.

I was really interested in the Federal American Eagle Suppressor 22 LR 45 Grain CPRN. Would it work in my somewhat finicky competition gun? I had thought I had my suppressor in my range bag but I couldn’t find it. Without the suppressor to give some additional backpressure I thought there was zero chance of it working. I was wrong. I fired two magazines without even a hint of malfunction and with excellent accuracy.

That was almost a month ago.

Last week I put in an exhaustive search for my suppressor to finish off the review. I finally found the suppressor laying on a shelf in the gun safe rather than in a range bag or gun case like I expected. I went to the range for a late lunch one day (it’s about five minutes from work) and, as I had hoped, I had a few minutes when I was the only person in the bay. I put on the suppressor and took off the ear protection. There was the usual mildly intense pop with the first round then the rest of the rounds were not much more than the sound of the action of the gun cycling. Again, with perfect reliability and excellent accuracy.

Nice!

Thanks Widner’s!

Hearing loss reversal

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Restoring Hearing: New Tool To Create Ear Hair Cells Lost Due to Aging or Noise

Hearing loss caused by aging, noise, and some cancer therapy medications and antibiotics has been irreversible because scientists have not been able to reprogram existing cells to develop into the outer and inner ear sensory cells — essential for hearing — once they die.

But Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a single master gene that programs ear hair cells into either outer or inner ones, overcoming a major hurdle that had previously prevented the development of these cells to restore hearing, according to new research published today (May 4, 2022) in the journal Nature.

This is great news! I grew up driving extremely noisy tractors without hearing protection. And even with hearing protection after shooting some guns under certain conditions I can tell I had too much exposure.

I like living in the future.

Boomershoot 2022

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Boomershoot went reasonably well this year.

Dinner was good. I really like this food vendor. This is the second year for them and will probably will continue to be the vendor of choice.

MTHead (frequent commenter here and sometimes quite quotable) showed up and helped with Saturday target production.

Our Saturday night dinner speaker Kim du Toit spoke on how he believes individuals can help Make America Great Again. He says there is a Boomershoot report to follow once he returns to Texas. Also, he has a plan to sponsor a free Boomershoot dinner for all participants. We will discuss the details and give his idea serious consideration.

The weather was mixed with showers on Saturday but Friday and Sunday was dry and a bit cool. The targets had a high detonation rate. We did not find any targets which failed to detonate when they received a solid hit. There were the usual targets which were torn and lost content when hit by projectiles of wood, rock and ammonium nitrate prills from other targets which detonated.

We had a last minute problem with the land owner on the hillside informing us the USDA Conservation Reserved Program had recently informed him the rules were being interpreted much more strictly than in the past. Hence we couldn’t put any targets on the grass. This limited the most distant targets to about 690 yards to 700 yards and about 30 feet in width. We put targets in this area out in two batches.

The muddy 375 yards berm was handled in a special manner as well. In previous years with extreme mud we found the blast from targets would completely coat remaining targets with mud which was near perfect camouflage. To prevent this we put targets in this area out in three batches. The targets were given greater spacing in depth as well as elevation. This was a huge help. There was virtually no mud coating of nearby targets.

The first two batches at the 375 yard line were the usual mix of small (4″x4″ and some 3”x3”) and a few 7”x7” targets. The last batch was a last minute idea of mine. Instead of putting the remaining 140 7”x7” targets out near 700 yards we put them at 375 yards. This made the end of the event easy, fast, and exciting. A Boomershoot Grand Finale! It seemed to be a great hit.

I had one shooter tell me, “I had my bench and everything packed up and then I saw there were a whole bunch of big targets at 375. That’s like a bank setting a bunch of cash out in the open for everyone. I had to unpack my gun and shoot from the ground. I got another 10 targets and one probable.

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Some of the more elaborate setups.

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One of my co-workers and his wife with heads down.

The remainder of this post is high in image intensity and so I have split it to save people bandwidth.

Continue reading →

Firearms Guide 13th Edition

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This is rather cool. I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter at Boomershoot this year about building guns. This would be very useful for those building high end custom guns, people doing 3D printing, and everything in between.



Online Gunsmithing Library with 21,583 printable Gun
Schematics, Blueprints, Manuals, and
Catalogs

 

Impressum Media Inc., Los Angeles, CA (www.FirearmsGuide.com)
– April 28.2022 – For gunsmiths and shooting industry professionals worldwide,
Impressum Media Inc just published new Firearms Guide 13th Edition
that is not only the largest searchable guns & ammo reference guide, gun
values guide, but also largest online Gunsmithing Library.

 

Published since 2009 at www.FirearmsGuide.com
for shooting industry professionals, Firearms Guide is used worldwide by
private, police and military gunsmiths, gunsmithing schools and students,
ballistic labs, sheriffs and police departments, gun shops, public defenders,
and law offices in the USA and Internationally.

 

“The New Firearms Guide 13th Edition
is the world’s largest searchable guns & ammo reference guide that presents
over 80,000 antique and modern firearms, air guns, and ammunition from 1,633
manufacturers from 62 countries. With its 14 search criteria, Firearms Guide
enables fast, complex searches of 80,000 antique and modern guns and
side-by-side comparisons of search results. Guns are cross-referenced with the
huge ammunition database. Firearms Guide searchable Ammo Database has over 7,000
different rounds with ballistics and ammo pictures and is often used by
ballistic labs and police departments. Guns and ammo are presented with prices,
tech specifications, features, gun values, ballistic, and up to 12
high-resolution zoomable color pictures. With over 58,000 gun pictures (in
resolution up to 4000 x 1240) and with the biggest online visual (graphic) Gun
Codes, Proof Marks, Stamps, and Crests Guide, Firearms Guide is a great tool for
fast and precise firearms identification of antique and modern civilian and
military guns from 1,633 manufacturers and 62 countries” says Chris Mijic,
publisher of Firearms Guide.

 

“Gunsmiths will love the fact that the Gunsmithing
Library of the new 13th Edition
has over 21,583 zoomable and printable high-resolution gun schematics,
blueprints, manuals, and antique catalogs that they can zoom in on their large
computer screens and print out when they work on a client’s gun. It saves work
hours/money for gunsmiths that can now get schematics, parts lists, and armorers
manuals instantly and concentrate on their work. After they fix their client’s
gun, they can print the manual for that gun and give it to their clients. It is
a nice touch that your clients will appreciate.”

 

“Many Firearms Guide users love the fact that they can
use the Firearms Guide completely anonymously, without Google or any search
engine or internet provider tracking and archiving the gun-related searches that
they can later sell to any client or deliver to the government,” says Chris
Mijic, publisher of Firearms Guide. “Firearms Guide offers 100% user
privacy.”

 

 

Published since 2009 for shooting industry
professionals and gun enthusiasts, with its new 13th Edition published at www.FirearmsGuide.com, Firearms Guide
is:

 

1. A Reference
Guide that presents over 80,000 antique and modern firearms, air guns, and
ammunition from 1,633 manufacturers from 62 countries.

• Presents models with Tech Specs, Hi-Res Color
Pictures, Features, Ballistics, and Prices!

• Searchable reference guide with 14 search criteria –
better results than Google

• Over 58,000 high-resolution color pictures of guns in
resolutions up to 4000 x 1492!

• Presents Antique and Modern Pistols, Revolvers,
Rifles, Shotguns, Fully Automatic Military Guns (Heavy machine guns, Submachine
guns, Light machine guns, Automatic Pistols), Tactical Rifles, Air Guns, and
Ammunition in all calibers.

 

2. A
Gunsmithing Library with 21,583
zoomable and printable hi-res gun schematics, blueprints, gun manuals, and
antique gun catalogs – for all types of antique and modern
guns.

• With original blueprints for 1911, AK-47, AR-15,
Luger pistol, M1 Garand, M14, MP44, STG44, P38, etc you will be able to make
100% exact copies of each part or entire gun.

• With original Armourer’s Manuals for Glock guns, SIG
guns, H&K, FN, IWI, Webley, RSAF, and other guns you will have step-by-step
instructions on how to fix all possible problems that happen with those guns,
just like professional police or army armorers.

• With antique gun catalogs from Winchester, Colt,
Remington, S&W, Marlin, Beretta, Savage, Ruger, Walther, Browning, Ithaca,
Mauser, SIG, BSA, H&K, and many others.

 

3. A Gun Value
Guide that presents antique and modern guns with gun values online based on
the 100% – 30% condition ratings

• Now you can quickly and precisely estimate the value
of each gun in your collection

 

Firearms Guide 13th Edition is available with free
updates at www.firearmsguide.com

 

 

About
Impressum Media Inc.

Impressum Media Inc., founded in 2009 in Los Angeles,
California is the publisher of the Firearms Guide series of digital firearms,
air guns & ammunition references & value guides for gun enthusiasts and
industry professionals.

 

Contact
Info:

Chris Mijic,
Editor of Firearms Guide

Email:
Support@firearmsguide.com

Web:
www.FirearmsGuide.com

Impressum
Media Inc.

Boomershoot week is in progress

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I’ve been on site doing Boomershoot stuff on and off since last Friday. We had a private event on Saturday and tonight the first participants and volunteer staff showed up. Aaron (a regular in position 65) drove by my encampment about 7:00 PM. I did a few things before going over to visit with him.

Then as Aaron and were talking Barron, Janelle, their kids, and Bradley up.

Tomorrow daughter Kim and I will prepare Boomershoot Mecca for target production, do some inventory verification, pick up some last minute supplies, get the U-Haul trailer, and prepare for site preparation by the volunteers on Thursday.

The rented portable toilets were supposed to arrive last Thursday but the day before I got a call from the rental place. She sounded almost scared when she told me, “We no longer serve your area and we won’t be delivering the toilets tomorrow like we agreed.”

I told her I would have liked to have had more than one day notice. Did she have a suggestion for who might service our area? She did suggestion a competitor. I called them and they declined. I called a place in nearby Orofino I tried to contact months ago and they failed to return my call. I got voice mail again.

I was feeling the panic creeping up on me. Over 100 people here for a long weekend, 30 minutes from their hotel rooms and no toilets…

Then the phone rang. It was the Orofino rental place. “Sure! We can get three portable toilets to you next Wednesday.” That will be tomorrow. I’m still a little apprehensive because I have never done business with them before and I got burned with the other company last week after having the agreement in place for months. I’ll believe it when I see three clean and serviceable toilets sitting in Boomershoot Field sometime before midnight tomorrow.

Why You Aren’t A Better Shooter

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I was going through my list of unprocessed suggestions for blog posts and found this one from almost six years ago. The outline is:

  1. You don’t believe you are capable of being skilled
  2. You don’t know what skill looks like
  3. You don’t have a goal
  4. You don’t have adequate training
  5. You aren’t surrounded with people who are better than you
  6. You have poor physical conditioning
  7. You aren’t willing to fail
  8. You aren’t using the proper equipment
  9. Your shooting range is inadequate

Read the whole thing for some good insights.

She didn’t say this in the article but my guess is the order is by priority of things to work on for the average person.

My excuse isn’t listed. I haven’t been going to the range or matches enough. I have my own range well suited to the type of shooting I want to get better at but it’s 300+ miles from where I currently live.

Quote of the day—Shirley Johnson @ShirleyJwriter

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It’s too early to argue about penises and guns.
Just enjoy both and remember, if you don’t know what size you need, go rent a few at the gun range to see what fits you the best.
Or ask a friend to try theirs.

Shirley Johnson @ShirleyJwriter
Tweeted April 3, 2022
[While closely related this isn’t an example of Markley’s Law. I’m not certain it was intentional but I found it funny. The follow-up tweet contributed to the humor:

My husband does not like this post. He never goes to the range with me and now I am in trouble.

This in her profile doesn’t hurt, “I don’t need a 38. I need 38DD.”—Joe]

Reloading dies?

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If I could afford it, it would be cool to reload for this caliber. It would give Boomershoot a whole new meaning:

IMG_6881

Of course I would need a new press and reloading dies. Does anyone know where I could get a press and dies which could handle 16” projectiles?* Oh, I also need a new gun and new range.

* Yes, I know, these projectiles didn’t use a shell casing. I was just making a joke.

Labradar update

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As I mentioned a month ago I and many others have have problems with the Labradar smart phone app connecting to their chronograph.

My old phone worked with the app. That phone died and my new phone, a Galaxy S21 5G, would not make the Bluetooth connection. I purchased a few relatively cheap ($30->$90.00) phones for testing. The Nokia 2.1 – Android 9.0 Pie (Go Edition) actually worked most of the time. I have no plans to put a SIM card in it and use it as a real phone. It’s just an remote control accessory for the chronograph.

Last Thursday I received an email from Labradar:announcing (highlighting added):

The new Labradar App for iPhones/iPads and Androids is now available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store*. New features include.

  • Improved Bluetooth connectivity
  • Create notes for each shot and series
  • Add weather conditions
  • Create custom names for each series
  • Ke can be displayed in Joules and Ft.lb
  • Export files via email in CSV format
  • Create a custom name for your LabRadar
  • Quick entry of bullet weight for Power Factor calculations

Great. I’ll bet I wasted my money on the phone as a remote control, right?

Wrong. My Galaxy S21 still won’t connect. To be fair, they did say, “improved”, not “fully functional”. The Nokia 2.1 now works all the time instead of just most of the time. It is an improvement.

Labradar accessory

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I have a Labradar chronograph. It is more expensive than previous chronographs I have owned but as I have outlined before it has some major benefits.

There are some some issues with it too. It’s not required, but there is an app for use on your Android or iPhone. The app improved the usability considerably even though it wasn’t the best design and it would disconnect when the phone turned off the screen.

Then my phone had to be replaced. I bought a Samsung Galaxy S21 5G. Name brand, should be good, right? The Labradar will not connect with it. The phone recognizes the chronograph Bluetooth is up and running but cannot make the connection. It turns out many other people are having the same problem with other Android phones and tablets as well as iPhones.

The Android app hasn’t been updated since it was released on June 14, 2018. I have two very cheap older Android phone scheduled to arrive in a day or two and I’m hoping one of them will work.

Another issue is that you have to have the unit pointed at your target such that the bullet stays near to the center of the radar beam. You are supposed to use the notch on the top as a sight:

image

This is far from the best sight and is marginal at best.

While looking for a solution to the Bluetooth phone application issue I ran across a solution to the sighting issue. Actually, three solutions:

  1. Low profile without a bubble level.
  2. With a bubble level.
  3. Standard height without a bubble level.

I ordered option three on Saturday afternoon (Christmas day!) and it arrive today just four days later.

It took me less than 25 seconds to install it.

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image

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It fits perfectly and solidly. It deserves the average of five stars on the reviews it is getting.

Now if I can just get a phone to run the out of date app and connect to the unit. I think I could reverse engineer the API and write my own app but that is an extreme last resort.

Update: I tried two different phones:

The View 2 would not connect. The View 3 would sometimes connect five times in a row. Then it would fail 20 times in a row. I returned both of them and ordered a phone using Android 9 with 1 GB RAM. I have my suspicions that it is a timing problem. It seemed that if I were to reboot the phone then immediately try to connect to the chronograph the odds of connecting were better than 50%. But I didn’t try that enough to have a good sample size. I’m hoping that with not much RAM (and reviews complaining about how slow the phone is) that it may reliably connect to the Chronograph. The phone should arrive late next week. I’ll let you know….

Quote of the day—Chauncey DeVega

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Thomas Massie and Lauren Boebert, two of the most blatantly fascistic Republican members of Congress, are dreaming of a White Christmas — with the emphasis on “White.”

In the spirit of holiday cheer, Massie and Boebert recently shared family Christmas photos on social media — in which every family member is brandishing a gun. There’s nothing unique about them. Such a “tradition” is fairly common among a particular subculture of American gun fetishists and “ammosexuals.” This is but another symptom of America’s unhealthy infatuation with gun violence.

Chauncey DeVega
December 24, 2021
White supremacist Christmas: Those Boebert and Massie “gun photos” are a direct threat
[Reading the article was like reading about the trial in Darkness at Noon, propaganda from Nazi Germany, or the twisted reality described by the mentally ill. It is an elaborate tale constructed upon the flimsiest of scaffolding for evil purposes or from a delusional mind.

Even the pictures supplied were distorted.

These are the pictures supplied for the article:
BoebertMassie

The pictures supplied by Boebert and Massie:

boebert-guns-family-

Massie

It is my belief normal people are catching on to the disconnect from reality. The political left cannot bear to slow “progress” and push their delusions all the harder. Furthering the rife between reality and their “progress”.

This will not end well. Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Midway USA Birthday Pricing

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A fair amount of my online gun related purchases are from Midway USA. The prices are reasonable, the shipping is quick and the selection is excellent.

They also have something I haven’t seen other places. This is Birthday Pricing:

This fantastic program is available to you once per year to help you celebrate your special day.  Your special promotion code is activated 7 days prior to your date of birth and expires 7 days after, or once it has been used.

It is a nice bonus that I took advantage of this year to purchase a set of steel targets for my new gun range. I had planned to wait until next spring but I was shopping for something else and the alert about Birthday Pricing popped up when I visited the Midway USA site. I thought about it some and then a couple days later decided I probably wasn’t going to get a better price on a complete set of Steel Challenge targets. Last weekend I put them in a dry place for the winter:

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New .40 S&W powder puff loads

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When Rolf and I shot the ASI match last month I commented:

My powder puff loads failed to reliably cycle the action. The cool weather probably contributed to this. In the hot (for the Seattle area) summer the loads cycled the same gun just fine. I think I need to add another 0.1 of a grain to the load to make sure they work in the cooler weather.

I tested my new loads today. They worked great. I tested them in two different guns and also tested the old load. Both guns cycled the action without a problem with the new loads. The old loads had a few problems in the cool weather.

The 0.1 grain increase in charge also decreased the standard deviation:

Gun Bullet Weight Powder charge Mean velocity PF Sdev ES Min  Max
1 180.00 3.1 785.60 141.41 15.3 59.0 762 821
1 180.00 3.0 745.00 134.10 26.6 118.0 673 791
2 180.00 3.1 761.38 137.05 14.3 62.0 738 800
2 180.00 3.0 713.15 128.37 22.8 85.0 667 752

The group size was significantly smaller as well. This may have been because of the decreased standard deviation. A 140 PF is still very pleasant in a .40 S&W gun.

The bullets were polymer coated lead bullets. The powder was Hodgdon Clays.

Review of Bravo Belt Holster

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Earlier this week I received an email:

From: BravoBelt Team
Sent: Monday, October 4, 2021 5:59 AM
To: blog@joehuffman.org
Subject: LOVE YOUR ARTICLE!

Hi!
I was searching around and came across with your article: A step in the right direction. I love the content! My name is Oliver and I’m on the Outreach Team for @BravoBelt. We recently released an updated BravoBelt holster that I think your readers would appreciate.
Let me know if you would like one to review and I will drop one in the mail for you.
Thanks!

Oliver Sana
Digital Operations Manager
The BravoBelt Team
www.bravobelt.com

After looking at their website I was skeptical, but at 3:00 AM the next day I agreed to review their holster. I was skeptical for three reasons:

  1. The opening for the gun is elastic and collapses when the gun is removed which probably makes it difficult to reholster one handed and without looking at the holster.
  2. The snapped strap over the top of the gun will slow the draw.
  3. The spare magazine are shown on the same side of body as the gun. This will slow your reloads. And for the left handed shooter it’s going to take some real contortions to reach your reload.

From their website (see more pictures on Amazon):

BravoBeltHolster

I received the holster two days after agreeing to review it.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the package was the smell. The smell of neoprene was almost overpowering. Thankful the smell faded after a couple days in the open air.

I was pleased to observe the magazine holster was different from what was pictured. The magazine holster was a separate pouch which fastened with Velcro to almost wherever you want it. I was easily able to position it on my left side exactly where I wanted it.

The holster is extremely comfortable. It was almost soothing!

This is where I run out of nice things to say about the holster. My other concerns were mostly realized.

The elastic opening immediately collapsed when the gun was drawn. I could wiggle the gun back into the holster with one just one hand but I really needed to look at it as I was doing it. There are various scenarios in defensive handgun usage where this can be important. In the General Defensive Handgun class from Insights Training one of the critical features of a holster was that it be relatively easy to holster your gun, sight unseen, with one hand. This holster fails that test.

The same sort of story can be told about putting a magazine into the holster on the other side. If you do a reload with a partially empty magazine and want to put the used magazine in the holster you need to use another hand (holding the gun? Nope.), get your eyes on the holster, or fumble one handed for a bit. I’m not liking these scenario in a defensive encounter.

The strap over the back of the gun is required for secure carry. The gun moves around too much without it.

I practiced drawing for several minutes and I was able to get into a “groove” that was faster than I expected. It was more complicated than a typical draw with the snap needing to be released, then flipped over the back of the gun, and then the hand going down again to get under the strap. The elastic helped some. The strap would do a lot of the flipping on it’s own but I still needed to time things right and make sure my hand was under the strap when I gripped the gun.

I could comfortably and repeatedly get off my first shot in 2.25 S from concealment from underneath a unbuttoned flannel shirt. Not too bad, I thought. I could not get it down to 2.0 S. As I sped up the strap and/or my t-shirt would inevitably get between my hand and the grip of the gun.

I put my Kramer IWB #2 holster back on and tested my draw speed. 1.5 S was repeatable. Hmmm… 1.5 S to 2.25 S is a 50% increase in draw time. Is a 0.75 seconds critical? One could make the case that it could sometimes mean the difference between life and death. It’s probably not super critical in the big picture. I think I would worry more about the increase in complexity in a time of stress causing a tangled clothing draw of 5.0 S instead of the 2.25 S draw under controlled conditions.

I asked Barb to model the holster for pictures and she readily agreed. Pictures are with the holster unconcealed for demonstration purposes. Wearing it over a t-shirt and under my flannel shirt made little difference in functionality than as shown below:

image

Notice the pouch for your cellphone in the picture above? That worked well for me.

The Velcro attached spare magazine holster had the advantage of being adjustable to exactly the right spot regardless of your waist size.

image

She was not happy with it. If it was low enough to easily draw then it was just below the widest portion of her hips. This made it more difficult to conceal, risked having it slide down, and made walking and bending over uncomfortable. I had her raise it up to where it was above the top the widest area of her hips. Then the draw was difficult because she was running out of range of motion to be able to lift her gun high enough to clear the holster:

image

The fit on me was a little better. I could position the height of the holster such that the gun didn’t poke me when walking or bending over and I could complete the draw even though I was reaching the end of my range of motion.

image

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The price for this holster is $27.77 to $29.95 (depending on waist size) on Amazon. That is a great price for a functional holster. But this holster has functional deficiencies for defensive carry. That said, because of the extreme comfort it might be that someone is more likely to carry than not carry. And the first rule of gun safety is to have a gun.

Rolf and I shoot an ASI match

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I invited Rolf to go to an ASI match with me and this morning he showed up at my house about 8:20 AM and I drove us the rest of the way to the Renton Fish and Game Club.

I expected with the weather on the cool side, threats of rain, and ammo shortages the number of people would be less than usual. I was wrong. 95 shooters showed up. There were 15 or 16 people on our squad. This makes the match longer than usual. One of the things I like about the ASI matches are that they are usually over by 12:30 or 1:00 and there is enough time left in the day to do other things. It was right at 2:00 PM before we were done. But having lots of shooters is a good thing for the gun culture, so I’ll stop whining about that now.

I first “met” Rolf on the email distribution list for the Microsoft Gun Club (now “The Gun Club at Microsoft). Later I met him in person at the Tuesday Night Pistol League at Weapons Safety, Inc. This was all stationary shooting at a stationary target. He has taken numerous courses from Insights Training, he has been participating and/or volunteering at Boomershoot for many years and I figured he had shot at least a few USPSA pistol matches or maybe a few IPDA matches. Nope. This was his first “action” shooting match.

Hmmm… Okay, well, I know he will do fine. I’ve seen him shoot pistol and revolver before (he used a .357 to shoot boomers at “entertainingly close” distances).

I took a few pictures of him at the match today and after reviewing them he said this is the best one:

20211009_133145

“Always willing to lend a hand out”, he told me.

I’m inclined to think this one is better:

20211009_133153

I told him I expected he would come in between the bottom third and the bottom half. After seeing him shoot the match I stood by the prediction.

Match results are here. He came in at the 32nd percentile, Very close to my prediction and excellent for a first time action shooter.

I had a couple mechanical malfunctions (and a couple mental ones as well). My powder puff loads failed to reliably cycle the action. The cool weather probably contributed to this. In the hot (for the Seattle area) summer the loads cycled the same gun just fine. I think I need to add another 0.1 of a grain to the load to make sure they work in the cooler weather. I probably could grip the gun tighter and make them more reliable but it would be better to increase the charge a little bit. This will allow me to use them with new shooters with reduced risk of them getting frustrated with the failures to extract and feed.

Gun and ammo scams

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I did a web search for small pistol primers and found most brands of primers at unbelievable prices. They have Federal small pistol for $35.00/1000 and CCI small pistol primers for $50.00/1000.

I was suspicious but went through the order process. The cart did not result in taking my credit card information even though I opted for credit card payment instead of PayPal. It ended with a message saying I would be contacted for my payment information. An hour or so later I received an email giving me the payment options of PayPal,
Cash app, or Apple Pay. No credit card option.

I did some research. The domain was created on February 24th, 2021. Hmmm…

Their “About” page an other pages say “WELCOME TO HOUSE OF FIRE ARM”. That wording is a little odd… The email address they sent the payment request from is “House of Firearms houseoffirearms@gmail.com”.

The website says the company is located in Kansas. But a business search on the Kansas Security of State web site comes up empty for the names:

  • House of Firearm
  • House of Fire Arm
  • House of Firearms
  • House of Fire Arms

I am almost certain it is a scam.

I found another web site, again with awesome prices, with similar wording on many of their pages which I am very suspicious of. I haven’t fully investigated them yet.

Be careful out there. If something is too good to be true it probably is.