Category Archives: Gun Fun

Boomershoot prep–a 150 pound tripod

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This time of year (66 days until Boomershoot) not just me but participants start putting the finishing touches on their plans for the big event. Here we see the results of Bruce Da Squirrel Hunter Boomershoot project:



Here is part of the story from Bruce himself:



Well I finally finished my year long project of building a completely new Polished Stainless Steel Tripod. This couldn’t have happened without the wonderful help of .223 Bill Lester and Fred Forgone working with me hand and foot to get this project completed on time for April 30th and Boomershoot once again this year. I think Fred has more gray hairs this year with me bugging him non-stop for his assistance with so many miscellaneous parts and devices even on his days off.


My hat is off to .223 Bill and Fred for sticking with me and letting me drive both of them nuts for a year while we invented and built what I believe is the best shooting platform ever invented. This Stainless Tripod was .223 Bill’s first production unit since his personal prototype which was made from mild steel. A true craftsman and dedicated friend.


This years project was invented after last years highly modified hunting tripod which had a 55 pound railroad track hanging from the center of the pod which made the total tripod with rifle weigh in at approx. 130 pounds.


After great success with that unit, I was still unhappy about having to hold and adjust the rear of the rifle for every shot. My heartbeat was moving the crosshairs too much in the excitement of Boomershoot.


So back to the drawing board and the current project for this past year has been: “How do we build a better mouse trap”?


Well, you start with the best pair of talented craftsmen who can invent right along with you and build dream toys with a common goal of hitting 7 inch targets all the way out to 650 yards and 700 yards.


The attached photos show my first dress rehearsal of the unit in my living room as my garage isn’t big enough with two cars in it to allow me to set this monster up in. The rifle is a Remington 700 Long Action and a Hart Custom .25-06 fluted barrel. The rifle is the only item carried over from last year.


The new tripod has an aluminum front Anti-Cant device and the rear has a polished mild steel Micro Elevation / Traversing Device. Along with these two items is a Mono-rail Anti-lift device up front that I also invented, a modified design instead of the two rail system I employed last year.


Hopefully the recoil will be less then last year with the overall increased weight (150lbs) and the much larger footprint of this unit. I had the .25-06 recoil down to that of a .22 long rifle last year. If this unit does what I think it will, there won’t be any recoil this year.


This new tripod still needs to be field tested, but I have a feeling that this will be one sweet tripod to shoot from.


I can’t wait for Boomershoot and the chance to really put all this work to the test.


Thank you once again Fred and Bill for all you did and sacrificed for me.


We might just once again hear the call of the wild “ReAdjust”

A gun joke

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From the comments here:



An old Italian Mafia Don is dying and he calls his grandson to his bed.

“You lissin-a me. I wanna for you to taka my chrome plated 38 revolver so you will always remember me.”

“But grandpa, I really don’t like guns. Howzabout you leava me your Rolex watch instead.”

“Shuddup an lissin. Somma day you gonna runna da business, you gonna have a beautifula wife, lotsa money, a biga home and maybe a couple a bambinos.

Somma day you gonna coma home and maybe find you wife inna bed with another man. Whadda you gonna do then……pointa to you watch and a say, Times Up?”

A new sporting rifle on the market

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I love the name they gave it–Sporting Rifle. Surely that must mean it is for “sporting purposes” and it can’t possibly be an “assault weapon”.

 

 

And did you notice the logo on the side of the receiver? STI!

 

I shoot a STI gun in competition, I carry a STI gun and you should too.

Hey! I know that guy!

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Never mind the 1600+ yard (that is 0.91 miles) hit on a 12″ diameter plate, the guy in the video (you get to see him toward the end) is someone I know. He has been to Boomershoot several times and Barb and I went to high school with his Aunt Shirley. He also used to shoot a lot of IPSC at the same events I went to.





Oh, he is also a gunsmith. I suspect he made the video to show off some of his work as well as his talent.


Thanks to Boomershooter Michael who had the following to say about the video:



Spring is coming, and a not-so-young man’s thoughts turn to . . . Boomershoot. 🙂


Well, close enough for now.

More AP ammo testing

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As planned Caleb and I did some more tests with Ry’s test target. Video and commentary by Caleb.


We went to the Boomershoot site expecting to find little or no snow. We should have called ahead. There was about two feet of snow and we were unable to make it to the Taj Mahal with all our gear. We made do at the first berm. We used a paper target to zero the gun for this range (25 yards) then took a single shot with each caliber at the stack of steel plates at the base of the stump. The bullets at the steel plate went over the chronograph.


This was our setup.



In the following video you see the result of SS-109 and 30.06 blacktip ammo shot at the stack of steel plates each 0.25 inches thick. There is a gap of about 0.75 inches between each plate. Estimated velocity of the .223 bullet at the target is 2600 fps. Estimated velocity of the 30.06 bullet at the target is 2360 fps.


The .223 went through one and almost penetrated the second plate. The 30.06 went through three plates and partially into the fourth.



The .300 Win Mag pushing hand-loaded 162 grain military surplus black tip bullets was able to hit the target with a velocity of about 3315 fps. It went through all six plates:



Update: See also this paper on AP ammo. It’s just the first page (you have to pay for the rest of it) but it’s interesting reading.

Reactive target video

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I love reactive targets and I use them so much I am a little jaded. But even though these targets aren’t as reactive as the ones I make I still enjoyed the video.


And contrary to some indicators just because there is a woman pulling the trigger some of the time doesn’t mean I’m annoyed with the video. I find this is an appropriate use of women and guns in our fight to keep and bear arms.

School Shooting Match

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My son Alex is part of a high school school trap shooting team.  They had a match this morning near Rosalia, Washington, which was attented by several high school teams from around the region.  Trap is quite popular in Eastern WA, as this is one of the best places in the country for pheasant and quail hunting, to say nothing of the excellent duck and goose hunting opportunities.  From the shooting lines today, we saw several hundred geese in the air.


 



Above; No, it isn’t a crime scene or a network news story.  It depicts a fun event in which kids use guns and sharpen their skills on aerial targets, and so, by definition, it isn’t “news”.  The parking lot was packed with similar vehicles, open, loaded with guns and ammo.  Most people don’t bother to lock their vehicles, me included.



Above; an appropriately named school district.



Above; Alex in full target-busting mode.  That’s a decent hit– lots of small fragments.  If you hit one full-on, it disappears in a cloud of dust.  Scoring is the same either way.  If you break a little piece off the target, it’s a hit, same as a “duster”.



A great time was had by all.  Everyone was super nice.  There were decent facilities for those who wanted to stay warm and there was free coffee and decent food at very reasonable prices.  This locally operated club range was equipped with four trap houses, meaning 20 kids can be on the shooting line at one time.


I’d guess there were about 80 shooters attending and about 150 to 200 people there in total– Guns and ammo lying about everywhere, much like you’d find skis and poles sitting out on stands in front of a ski lodge.  Now if we were to take anything the anti gun-rights loons say with a shred of seriousness, we’d assume that all these kids would end up turning on each other in a bloddy shootout, as the stresses of competition became too much for them to handle, or something.  In fact, everyone was relaxed and friendly.  I will point out that, unlike a typical football game, there are no paramedics on standby at these events.  There would be no point in it.


Alex broke 26 of 50 targets, which isn’t bad, but a really good shooter would have hit 50 of 50.  Today there was some gusting wind, so even a really good shooter might have missed one or two because the targets were jumping around a bit in the wind.  If you’ve ever thrown a Frisbee in the wind you what know what I mean.  These clay targets fly a lot like little Frisbees.

“Yes” to Just One Question

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I believe I have an answer to Joe’s “Just one Question”.

 

As Joe states;

 

There are three possible answers to this question.

  1. “I don’t know.” In which case my response is, “Come back to the debate when you can answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.”
  2. “No.” In which case my response is, “Then you should be advocating the repeal of ALL gun control laws and I don’t want to hear a single anti-freedom word from you on this topic again.”
  3. “Yes and here is my demonstration.”

 

My answer is; “Yes and here is my demonstration.”

 

In response to Clinton era attacks on gun rights, I and many other Americans decided to buy our first guns, or to get back into shooting after a long hiatus.  Gun dealers often credited Clinton (and his administration) for being “salesman of the year” for several years running.  The atmosphere at gun shows was very energetic, and the NRA’s membership got a large bump as people got guns and got involved in pro second amendment activism.  The NRA and other groups also started pushing harder for gun handling safety as it became clear that our right to keep and bear arms was seriously threatened.  This all falls under what we’ll call “backlash”.

 

The backlash against actual gun restriction resulted in more gun owners, more participation in shooting activities, more participation in pro 2A activism, more emphasis on safety and self defense, and many more states passing “shall issue” concealed carry laws.

 

More armed citizens, more of them carrying concealed, and more emphasis on safety and home security, and presto– violent crime has been going down in the areas where gun ownership has increased, and gun accidents have been on the decline for years, even with the increased gun ownership.

 

Hence, I submit that, due to public backlash, the average person has indeed been made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons.

 

The twist lies in the fact that guns weren’t simply banned except in a few small pockets in the U.S..  The question pertains to “restrictions” and not to full prohibition.  In those places where all guns were effectively outlawed, crime continued to rampage, but in places where we could still legally get and keep guns we became safer.  Semi-auto rifles and carbines (the so-called “assault weapons”) were purchased in the largest numbers too, because those were the ones most threatened (my first gun purchase ever was a Glock 20 with a 15 round magazine, because I knew the magazine restriction was coming.  I then bought several more 15 round magazines “while I still could”).  I maintain that the very large increase in interest in AR-15s and AKs, et al (“Evil Black Rifles” or EBRs) is in part due to the Clinton era restrictions.

 

Today, the Clinton era concerns are back.  The Obama groupies are wanting to pass more gun restrictions, and as a result, people are buying up guns, “while we still can”.  Most pointedly, they’re buying up semi-auto rifles and carbines, semi-auto pistols, full capacity magazines and folding or collapsible stocks, as those are all in the most threatened category.  We can only hope for more change in the form of backlash.  Do your part to make America even safer; encourage your friends and neighbors to get their first guns, join the NRA, and become active “while they still can”.

Pentration test of .50 BMG AP

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Details of the test, with pictures, are here. Ry stopped by the house yesterday and I got to handle the test target and we talked and speculated about the details of the test results. The next time I go back to Idaho I think I will borrow his target and do the same test with 30-06 AP.

Comment on hunting regs in Washington state

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Via reader Roger I became aware we have this proposal to make a change in the archery hunting regulations:

WAC 232-12-054  Archery requirements–Archery special use
permits.  (1) Rules pertaining to all archery:
(a) It is unlawful for any person to carry or have in his
possession any firearm while in the field archery hunting, during
an archery season specified for that area, except for modern handguns
carried for personal protection.  Modern handguns cannot be used to
hunt big game or dispatch wounded big game during an archery, big
game hunting season.

The underlined portion is the proposed change. It sounds like a good idea to me. Why should you give up your right to defend yourself with a handgun just because you are doing some archery hunting?

Email your comments to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife here before February 20th, 2009. More details on the commenting process can be found here.

More data points on gun sales

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Yesterday Barb and I went on drive. This Thursday Barb has a class in Bellingham so we drove up there ahead of time to make sure she can find it without difficulty during morning traffic. It was a nice day and it was a pleasant drive and we got a chance to talk about a bunch of stuff rather than sitting at our respective desks with our hobbies.


Just prior to leaving we stopped at Joe’s Sports, Outdoor, and More (no relation). I was looking for some .45 ACP brass so I can reload for my Gun Blog 45. Midway is out of stock. The shelf with the brass was nearly empty with only a couple bags with some 7mm brass hanging from a hook. The powder and primer shelves were nearly empty as well. Hmmm…


On the way back from Bellingham we stopped at Kesselring Gun Shop in Burlington. The parking lot was FULL. And this is on the same weekend that WAC had their big show in Puyallup! I found a narrow spot to park between a building and a pickup that was parked such that it was blocking a private road. We went inside to find the store was packed. Every aisle was crowded. There was just barely enough room to move between all the people. I found the brass I was looking for at a reasonable price (considering), paid for it and we left.


One has to wonder if we had put that much money and effort into defeating Obama in November would we have succeeded? Being reactive seldom is better than proactive but that just isn’t the way human nature works. And the money gun owners are spending on firearms, ammo, and accessories could have gone into the election process and ended up in the hands of mainstream media who are one of our worst enemies and instead of into tools of freedom in our own hands.

Para USA promotes gun bloggers

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I received an email from Para USA a few minutes ago. They are preparing for SHOT Show and will be distributing a new catalog at the show. The page 34 of the catalog looks like this:



You can download the 2009 Para USA catalog off their website at this link http://www.para-usa.com/new/product_catalog.php.


You might have noticed the video link on the image to a web page and video of the gun blogger event. Yeah, it doesn’t work for me either.

Maximum range of bullets

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I added another feature to Modern Ballistics for the Field. It now gives you the approximate maximum range for your bullet under the given environmental conditions.

A Fine Day For Shooting

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Today (Sunday) was a beautiful sunny day, and with the drifted snow glistening like it was covered with diamonds, it was far too beautiful to stay inside.  I took Alex to the Peterson Range near Moscow, Idaho for some fresh air.


The driveway up to the shooting bays was blocked with a large snow berm.  We could have spent some time with a shovel to clear the berm, but even then I’d need chains on all fours to have any chance of driving in.  Too much bother.  Much easier to don the snowshoes and walk in.


Now this is a nice exercise in itself.  If you have your rig right there at the shooting bay, it means you can lay everything out– your shooting bag, all your ammo, gun cases, everything, even working right off your tailgate.  When you’re hiking in, you bring what you can carry.  In this case it meant leaving the range bag, most of the ammo and some of the gun cases behind.  Not a problem.  I had my .45 in in my pocket and a CZ-52 pistol in a flap holster with two mags, plus a three-mag AR pouch on by belt.  One 20 rounder in the AR and another 30 round magazine that fit in my breast pocket.  Four 15 round mags for the M1 Carbine on one belt, plus a 50 round box of Carbine ammo in another coat pocket.  With water bottles (you lose a lot of water just breathing in these conditions, so always bring water) targets and a stapler, wearing our eyes and ears, we were off for a nice afternoon of leisurely hiking and shooting in the sunshine.


Strangely, we were the only ones at the range today.


The weather could not have been better.  At around 20 degrees F, the snow doesn’t melt too much on your clothing and you stay nice and dry.  Plus when you’re hoofing around the range with a load, on snowshoes, you don’t overheat, and it’s not so cold that your lungs are stressed.  Perfect.


Here we’re testing out the steel pistol targets.  No problem, except that some trespasser had gone in and shot holes in the steel with a centerfire rifle (all members know never to do anything so stupid and inconsiderate);



Since everything around us is covered in anywhere from several inches to several feet of snow, loading the mags required a little different technique.  Holding the ammo box and the magazine in one hand, I’m stuffing the rounds in with the other.  Everything stays out of the snow.  For the rifles we brought enough pre-loaded magazines;



Here I’m sighting in the M1 Carbine.  This gun had failed on the last outing, due to a gas piston nut that had worked its way completely out of the gas block.  I am amazed that the thing never self-destructed.  Nice going on the design, W.W. II era guys!  The gas nut is supposed to be staked in place, but this more recently manufactured IAI carbine never had the nut staked.  It took many thousands of rounds of UltiMAK product testing before the gas nut finally worked its way out.  After that I had disassembled the rifle completely including a full takedown of the bolt, removed the optic and the optic mount, repaired the damaged gas nut threads and trued up the gas piston, then reinstalled the nut with Locktite (another accepted method) installed a new optic mount (to test a new lot) and reinstalled the Holosight.  After all that, the Carbine shot to POA with no adjustments at 20 yards, and then at 100.  I didn’t see any need to change the settings on this old Holosight.  No malfunctions;



If you happen to own a .30 Carbine, let it be known that the exposed lead at the base of regular FMJ bullets does partially melt, it atomizes when liquefied and it finds its way into the gas block, depositing in there, slowly reducing the volume inside the gas chamber and eventually preventing the piston from traveling all the way forward.  It forms a very hard dross that is a royal bitch to clean out.  That’s one reason why I want to try the Speer hollowpoints– they have a full copper base.  You may find similar deposits inside the AR-15 bolt carrier, back behind the bolt, which is why you need to clean it thoroughly.


Alex and I each got photos of each other with brass in the air (here’s the trick; press the shutter button part way own, into the “here’s the exact exposure I want” setting. The instant you hear the report, press the shutter button all the way– you get instantaneous shots that way.  Works nearly every time);



We had a brass catcher on the AR (a good idea when shooting in the snow) but no one seems to make one for the Carbine.  The brass comes out hot and melts the snow when it hits, so when you pick up the cases they’re encrusted in ice.  Yes, a brass catcher would be much better out here today. I wanted to bring home every .30 Carbine case because I’m going to load up a batch of hollowpoints for function testing.


All in all it was a great time.

Modern Ballistics for the field

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I’ve fixed all the fixable bugs in my cell phone/PDA web based exterior ballistics program I announced last November and put it at it’s permanent home at http://field.modernballistics.com/.


Enjoy and let me know if you run across any bugs not mentioned on the Known Bugs page. Suggestions for improvements are also welcome. Send them to “JoeH AT modernballistics.com”.

Where does the bullet go?

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I have worked with the mathematics of exterior ballistics for so long that I sometimes forget the general nature of the path of a rifle bullet to it’s target is not mind boggling obvious. I was reminded of this by an email I received today:



Need a answer: I was told that when shot a 30 cal. bullet goes up and makes an arc to the target, when held level. What happens, say at 100 yards.?


This email caused me to have a flashback to when I was in grade-school (yes Kris, firearms had been invented by the time I left grade-school).


When I was about the fourth grade a friend of mind, Verl (yeah, kids had strange names back in those days), insisted that the bullet would rise after it left the barrel of a rifle. I didn’t believe it and asked how long it took before it when into orbit (or some such thing that pointed out the absurdity of his claim). He didn’t know but asked his dad and came back to school and explained it went up for a while then came back down. My knowledge of and ability to articulate the physics of gravity and moving objects was limited and although I was profoundly unsatisfied with this explanation I couldn’t refute his assertion that it was true.


Later I made sense of it and eventually I wrote a computer programs that accurately predicts the path of a bullet as it leaves the muzzle. I am now much more capable of articulating the physics and will now attempt do so.


If you were to go to the range and instead of shooting the bullet you were to drop it from your fingers you would correctly expect the bullet to immediately accelerate toward the center of the earth and pick up speed at the rate of about 32 feet per second for each second it is in the air until it hit something. It doesn’t rise for a while then start falling. If you take a carpenter’s level to the range and line up the bore with the level such that the bore was horizontal and fire the gun the bullet will drop, relative to the horizontal, from the instant it leaves the barrel. It does not rise and then fall. It also does not fall at the same rate as a bullet you dropped from your fingers but that is another, much more complicated issue that is beyond the scope of this post.


Because the bullet immediately starts falling as it leaves the barrel in order for the sights to predict the impact point they are not aligned exactly parallel with the bore. They are aligned such that when you view the target they line up where the bullet will actually hit after bullet has dropped by whatever amount on it’s travel to the target. If the bore is horizontal the sights are pointed slight down. If the sights are horizontal then the bore will be pointed slightly up. In other words there is an angle between the line of sight and the bore of the gun. I call this angle the “Sight Angle”.


As far as I know I am the first to use the phrase “Sight Angle”. I use this to simplify the setting of the scope for long distance shooting. Most long range shooting instructors refer to your gun having a “Zero” that depends on the altitude, temperature, bullet velocity, and ballistic coefficient of the bullet. This is wrong. The gun is constant with respect to the environment. The drop of the bullet changes, not the scope setting.


Knowing the distance to the target and the drop the bullet makes when it goes this distance we can compute the proper angle the barrel should be with the horizontal to hit a target that is the same distance above the ground as the muzzle of the barrel. This angle is the proper angle required to have the gun exactly compensate for the drop of the bullet on it’s way to the target. This angle is not the sight angle because there is another complication–the height of the sight above (almost always but not necessarily) the bore. For a typical scoped rifle the line of sight through the scope is about 1.5 inches above the center of the bore. I call this the sight height. Using some trigonometry the sight height and proper angles can all be number crunched into a single number that you can dial into your scope such that for any give range and bullet drop you can dial your scope to the proper angle and you have precisely compensated for the drop of the bullet such that where you line the sights up that is where the bullet is going to go (minus bullet inaccuracy, wind drift, and shooter error). This “proper angle” is my Sight Angle. If you know what the environment is and you know the angle of the scope (and its height) relative to the bore you will know where the bullet will hit for any given range.


So, the email asked for what happens at 100 yards. Here are the graphs (generated with Modern Ballistics, which I wrote).


First the drop for a bullet fired with the bore of the gun horizontal. This is for a .308 Winchester shooting Federal match 168 grain bullets at “standard conditions” (59 F, sea level). Yes, I know this graph is confusing. It is not the path of the bullet. This is the distance the bullet has dropped as it traverses from the muzzle to the target. The drop increases the further it travels:



By the time the bullet has traveled 100 yards it has dropped nearly 3 inches. If you point the bore up at a slight angle (4.23 Minutes of Angle to be exact) compared to a scope mounted 1.5 inches above the center of the bore, aim the scope at a target 100 yards the bullet will start out 1.5 inches below the line of sight of the scope. Because the barrel is pointed up slightly as the bullet travels forward it will rise as it travels to the target. The distance from the line of sight through the scope to the bullet at any given range is called the height of the bullet at that range. Hence at the muzzle the height is -1.5 inches. And since the proper angle for a 100 yard zero was dialed into the scope the height at 100 yards will be 0.00 inches as seen in this graph:



So, from the viewpoint of the scope the bullet does rise and then fall. Of particular interest is that there are actually two zeros for this scope setting. There is a “Near Zero” at 49.8 yards and there is the normal or “Far Zero” at 100 yards. At what is called the Midrange, 75.1 yards in this case, the bullet is at its maximum height of 0.2 inches above the line of sight.


So that is the path of the bullet for a 100 yard shot.


It is just my opinion but I don’t think shooting at 100 yards is very interesting with a rifle. The errors involved for temperature changes, air pressure, wind drift, and bullet velocity variations just don’t stack up enough to amount to much at that kind of range. For a .30 caliber rifle I don’t find things particularly interesting until we start shooting targets at 500 yards and beyond. I’m not going to get into all the interesting details because 99.9% of the people will find what I think is fascinating as mind bogglingly boring. But here is a hint of 500 yard shooting. A graph of the height of a bullet, again relative to the line of sight of the scope, for the same rifle and cartridge as above but for a 500 yard target:


The answer is yes

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Someone wants to know if a .50 caliber round can penetrate a Mercedes Guard Pullman:






























































































Domain Name   swbell.net ? (Network)
IP Address   69.155.141.# (SBC Internet Services)
ISP   SBC Internet Services
Location  

























Continent  :  North America
Country  :  United States  (Facts)
State  :  Texas
City  :  Houston
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Distance  :  1,644 miles
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en-us
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Monitor  









Resolution  :  1024 x 768
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The answer is yes.


The Mercedes Guard Pullman is built to level B6/B7:



High-Protection vehicles, engineered to the European B4 resistance level, resist large-calibre revolver ammunition and offer particularly good protection against the increasing threat of drug-related and violent street crime.

Highest-Protection vehicles, engineered to resistance level B6/B7, provide effective protection against the threat posed by terrorist attacks. Their armour is designed to resist rifle-launched projectiles from military weapons which have a velocity almost twice that of bullets fired from a revolver. They also offer resistance to shrapnel from hand grenades and explosive charges.


According to this page the resistance levels are as follows:



  • B1 rifle .22 lr RN/Lead 10m

  • B2 hand gun 9mm Para FJ2)/RN/SC 5m

  • B3 hand gun .357 Magnum FJ3)/CB/SC 5m

  • B4 hand gun .44 Magnum FJ4)/FN/SCP 5m

  • B5 rifle 5.56mm x 45 FJ4)/PB/SC 10m

  • B6 rifle 7.62mm x 51 FJ2)/PB/SC 10m

  • B7 rifle 7.62mm x 51 FJ4)/PB/BC 10m*

The 7.62mm x 51 is .308 Winchester equivalent. Which means that even a .300 Win Mag (a common hunting rifle for those people in the Brady Campaign reading this) is not something they designed for. A .50 BMG should be able to punch through as well.




*If someone knows what the FJ4)/PB/SC etc. designations are I would appreciate being clued in. I presume it is the bullet type, like Full Metal Jacket, etc. PB might be lead (Pb is the chemical symbol), SC might be Steel Core. But that is all speculation on my part.


Thanks.

Xenia uses my Gun Blog 45

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She is so creative.


She forgot to turn the laser off before she put it back in the case however. I lost a few hours of battery life but it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Quote of the day–Col. William C. Hunter

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If there is anything in the theory of survival of the fittest, a lot of the people we know must have been overlooked.


Col. William C. Hunter
[I’m a little bit annoyed they canceled the steel match scheduled for today. People should be practicing under adverse conditions as well as when the environment is accommodating. Otherwise they are just enabling themselves to be culled when failure to perform under some hardship means non-survival.


I’d call them a bunch of wimps (actually I already did, but I didn’t mean it) except there wouldn’t be any place to park vehicles. With all the snow on the ground people couldn’t have driven up the road to the parking area.–Joe]

March pinup is non-functional

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Did anyone else with the ParaUSA 2009 calendar notice that the March pinup is non-functional?


Here is the picture:



If you don’t see the problem click on the picture for a close up. People not familiar with 1911’s will be at a slight disadvantage in discovering the blocking issue.


Update: In response to comments and Tam’s post I present the following pictures from my Para Gun Blog 45 and what I think is Caleb’s Gun Blog 9 (I stole the picture from the header on his blog):



Para Gun Blog 45 safety.



Para Gun Blog 9 safety.


I admit I could still be wrong on this point. I do not think the safety on March pinup has been modified as seen in either of the two pictures immediately above. Therefore in order for the Para SX745S pictured on the March calendar to be function one or more of three things would have to be true:




  1. The safety is mounted in a slightly different place


  2. The safety requires less travel


  3. The grips mount in a slightly different location

I think each of the above are very unlikely to be true. Therefore I stand by my claim the safety in this picture is unusable and the gun was for display purposes only.


Anyone want to make bets on the topic?


Update2: Kerby Smith from Para Public Relations says:



From the camera angle you can not see that the safety is relieved on the bottom side. The SX745S which is the March 2009 Special Edition pistol can be ordered with or without the Crimson Trace Laser grips. The ones that are ordered with the Crimson Trace Laser grips will have the right bottom side of the safety modified. And that is why the Crimson Trace Laser grips are coming factory installed as an option so we can make sure the safety works with them.