I finished up Monster Hunter International on Friday and started Monster Hunter Vendetta. There was so much mention made of Owen Z. Pitt’s specially modified Saiga shotgun which he calls “Abomination” that I had to get mine (stock configuration with none of Milow’s modifications) out and do a little shot gunning. Wal-Mart didn’t have any silver buckshot but they had Federal 00 in both 2.75 (9 pellets) and 3 inch magnum shells (15 pellets).

So today I shot up a couple USPSA targets:

Above is three shots of the 2.75” shells from 30’ away. One to the head, one to the center of the body, and one to the lower part of the body. The large holes are the wadding.

This is three shots of the 3” inch magnum shells and two shots of 2.75” #7 birdshot from 30’ away.

Unless there were a specific need for the extra payload I don’t see any need to use the harder recoiling 3” shells. My guess is that when firing multiple shots I can get just as much lead on target in the same amount of time with the 2.75” shells as I can with the 3” shells.

I also dumped a couple twelve round magazines of birdshot on some steel targets as fast as I could acquire a sight picture. That was fun and very invigorating. I need to do that more often.

Getting back to the books. These are really good books. I don’t even mind that Owen’s evil werewolf boss had the same name as my Grandfather. I do wish the troll was named MIkeB302000 instead of Melvin but I suppose that would be insulting to trolls and there might consequences.

And I can’t help but think that our gnome loving, daughter Xenia really should read the gnome fight scene.

Where is it written that most single action revolvers have to require chambers to be loaded/unloaded individually whereas a double action usually has a tip-out cylinder?  For that matter, where is it written that, if one wants to run a revolver in single action, one can’t buy a double action and run it exclusively as a single action, benefiting from the superior reloading system that is the tip-out cylinder?

If Major Schofield had come up with the moon clip back in the 1800s, and called for a double action, he’d have created what might be regarded as a modern revolver even by today’s standards.

It’s my understanding that the moon clip was created as a stop gap measure after W.W. I, allowing .45 ACP ammunition to be used in revolvers, with a minor alteration to the cylinder, at a time when 1911 pistols were in short supply.  Why don’t we see more moon clips, which allow faster reloading, used with rimmed cartridges?  Instead of carrying speed loaders, you carry the loaded moon clips and drop the whole business into the cylinder.

Cylinders with an odd number of chambers make it easier to place the lock notches in between chambers instead of at the thin spot right atop a chamber.  If I were getting a revolver chambered for a high pressure round I think I’d want a seven shooter or a nine shooter.

An 1858 Remington New Model Army, with its change-out percussion (“cap and ball”) cylinder, can be reloaded faster than the later Colt Peacemaker, so long as you have another loaded cylinder.  The consumable envelope cartridge of the 1860s can (if you’re willing to risk igniting the powder from the hot residue in the just-fired cylinders while you’re ramming the balls in) allow a percussion revolver to be reloaded almost as fast as the Peacemaker.  One problem was their fragility.

The French had combat caliber (10 and 11 mm) metal (pinfire) cartridges and bored-through cylinder revolvers years before the outbreak of our War Between the States.  I did not know that.

I can’t fully explain why, but I want a percussion revolver based on the 1858 Remington but with a lengthened and beefed up frame and cylinder so it can safely handle a 250 grain 45 caliber cast lead bullet and 60 grains of FFF black powder.  It’s what the Colt Walker should have been.  By comparison, the later .45 Colt metal cartridge used a maximum of about 40 grains black powder.  That and I want a matching carbine so they can use the same cylinders.  No fooling around with reloading metal cartridges – just cast the bullets.  Among the reasons I want these is that the way I read the WA State hunting regs for muzzleloader season (last year’s anyway) they’d be legal on deer.  Plus I think it would be cool.

On rifle she is a force to be reckoned with but Roxanna usually ends up in the middle of the pack at our USPSA pistol matches. Things were different on one stage today. She doesn’t appear to shoot it particularly fast but everyone else “had problems”. She didn’t have any misses and beat us all.

I tweeted about it here.

She asked for the video so here it is with Adam as the Range Officer:

As suggested by Alan I would like to publically invite Paul Helmke to a private Boomershoot party. I’ll supply the guns, ammo, and reactive targets. He just needs to arrange his own travel and accommodations.

Send me an email Paul. I’m nothing to be scared of. You shook my hand once, remember?

This (pages 2 and 3) would make an interesting starting point for an alternate history:

As Joyce Malcolm has extensively documented, the English perception of an individual right to arms arose out of a 17^th century reversal of policy course. Prior to the Stuart dynasty, English governments actively forced their subjects to own and use arms. All healthy male subjects were required to own arms appropriate to the time and their wealth, towns were required to construct shooting ranges, and all games other than marksmanship were outlawed in order to ensure that Englishmen would have but one legal sport.

Imagine if that were the case in the United States. No football, basketball, or baseball. Just hundreds of games involving shooting.

It would be totally unconstitutional (freedom of association would probably nix the idea) but it could make an interesting story.

Via Dave Hardy.

I’m not into collecting guns but maybe someone else out there is. Even if I were into collecting guns the sales price on these wouldn’t pass the wife test. And even worse—they don’t even shoot!

I do admire the mechanics though. That is very impressive.

Via email from K.W.

As I mentioned last week I created an IPSC stage based on the Lakewood shooting of four police officers. Yesterday the Lewiston Pistol Club shot that stage.

The results are as follows. Columns 2, 3, and 4 are the total times for the shooter to draw and shoot all their rounds. These were four rounds for the bad guy and six rounds for the cop and Barista. The last two columns were the estimated time the shooter (cop or Barista) had left before the last cop had been shot. This estimate was based upon the cop being able to get off his first shot in 1.5 S after the first shot of the bad guy and that the bad guy took a 1.5 seconds to get his first shot off. Similarly for the Barista except an assumption that they were able to get off their first shot in 1.0 S (they were much closer to the bad guy than the sitting cop was).

In other words the timeline is assumed to be:

At time t = 0.0 S the bad guy starts to draw his gun.
At time t = 1.5 S the bad guy fires his first shot.
At time t = 2.5 S the barista fires his/her first shot.
At time t = 3.0 S the cop fires his/her first shot.

If the bad guys last shot (column two below) is after the cop/Barista’s first shot then one or more cops are assumed to live. The more time in the last two columns the more lives saved.

To really do the numbers correctly we would need the first shot time of each of the shooters. I did get a few of those numbers but didn’t bother to write them down. They were approximately as assumed above.

One of the interesting results was that there were about five to ten “shoot thrus” of the bad guy by the Barista (out of 90 shots fired by the competitors) but all of them hit the body armor of the cops.

The bottom line is that if you were the last cop to be shot at then you had at best a 75% chance of survival. But if the Barista was packing and “on her toes” then unless the bad guy were a top notch shooter then one and probably two of the cops would have lived.

“I never thought it would be this much fun.  I thought it would just be a bunch of learning.” – Josh – One of my nephews

My niece, Roz and her husband, Josh had been talking about getting firearms for protection, but they wanted to get some hands-on experience before making any decisions.  I’d been telling them for some time that I was willing to show them several different handguns and long guns, different action types and so on, and have them do some shooting.

They made it down from Spokane to Palouse, WA, with a stop in Moscow to hand the baby over to Grandmother, on Monday.  After a quick briefing at my place as I was loading up the pickup, we headed to the closest range, about 9 miles away on the edge of Garfield, WA.

“I’ve got a pickup load of iron, and lead” – Josh said it should be a country song.  I agree.

This is for Tam – This is why you need a full sized, extended cab 4 x 4 pickup with canopy.  You can carry a lot of guns, a shooting bench, a clay target thrower, 100s of pounds of ammunition and several people all at once.  The duals in the back are optional.

When we got to the range, there was another pickup there stuck in the mud, a couple dozen cattle out in the adjacent wheat fields, a man on an ATV and one on foot out trying to round up the cattle, and Officer Friendly standing in the parking lot telling us A) that the range was closed for Memorial Day, B) the other truck was stuck, and C) don’t go over there and try pulling him out because you’ll just get stuck too.

Long story short; I went over there and pulled the other truck out (easily) the cattle got put back into their proper field, and Officer Friendly, who so far as I could tell didn’t do much if anything, said “Thanks for helping out”.  I didn’t tell him what I thought.  I just said, “No problem”.
Roz and Josh had come all this way to learn about guns and do some shooting, and here we were at a closed range messing around with tow straps, mud, cops and cattle.  Sometimes you just have to roll with what’s thrown at you.

15 more miles to an abandoned gravel pit and we were in shooting heaven.  We went through the safety rules, the functioning and handling of the AR-15, position, grip, sight alignment, breath control, trigger control, follow-through…  Slow fire at 80 yards, rapid fire at 20 feet.  Same with handguns.  At several points along the way, Roz was laughing as she was popping off rapid double and triple taps with a Glock 20, and hitting her target. “Front sight front sight front sight!  Your group’s too small, speed it up!” Giggle giggle giggle.  I think the dot-sighted M1 30 carbine was the favorite “fun gun” of the day though.

As we were wrapping things up, Josh came out with the money quote.

After all the talk and anxieties we’ve gone through at home regarding education verses understanding, teaching methods, self-organizing systems, etc., over the last few years, I can’t tell you how significant and how terrific it was to hear that.