Category Archives: Gun Fun

It’s that time of year

Posted on by

I’ve had two requests from people for help celebrating Halloween this year. Son-in-law Caleb and a friend from my work both want to blow up some pumpkins. That is planned for this Saturday.


This morning I got a report from someone else on the same topic:



As the crowd thinned, we started the good stuff. Saturday I had placed a baggie of amn mix in the seed cavity and shot it with the 300 weatherby loaded with 125 grain ballistic tips. I wanted to tell folks that I had acquired some new bullets and demo their performance. The pumpkin absolutely vaporized.


Yeah. That’s what happens alright. I’ll try to have pictures and video next week sometime.


Update: Video from November 2000 is here.

Quote of the day–Jaclyn Cousins

Posted on by

According to new research done at Oxford University, people who eat meat are less likely to suffer from shrinking of the brain than those that stick strictly to a vegetarian diet.


…


This doesn’t mean that vegetarians need to immediately start eating meat; it just means that when they decide to attack meat-eaters they should think about their small mindedness before hand.


Jaclyn Cousins
October 13, 2008
Vegetarianism Shrinks Your Brain
[H/T to Phil.


I’m in agreement with Kevin Baker on the topic:



Kevin Baker at the 2008 Gun Blogger Rendezvous on Friday October 10.


Xenia, be sure to eat your eggs and drink your milk.–Joe]

I know that guy!

Posted on by

Ry points out a great article on the evolution of sniping gear and deployment in the last few years.


The article was written by Michael Haugen who attended two Boomershoots. Michael also wrote three articles which are posted on the Boomershoot website:



If you have ever heard me tell the story about shooting on the 1000 yard range at Fort Lewis–Michael was the guy next to me with Eugene Econ spotting for both Michael and me.


Michael was the guy that referred to watching me build reactive targets on the tailgate of my pickup as “Bomb Building 101“.


I’m glad to hear he is still in the sniping business and apparently is well. I was impressed with his brains, seriousness, and dedication to our country and constitution.


And, as Ry said, I’m happy he calls out American Snipers as Good Thing. I donate money to them which Microsoft matches dollar for dollar.

Anything you video can be used against you

Posted on by

The first thing I thought of when I read this was the gun bloggers who went to summer camp at Blackwater a couple months ago. The critical portion is this (emphasis added):



The video that spurred the investigation of five men accused of plotting an attack on soldiers on New Jersey’s Fort Dix shows some of them in camouflage clothing, firing rapid-fire weapons on a snowy driving range.


An investigator who was on the case from the beginning testified Tuesday that the way the men were firing was unusual.


“They were actually advancing toward a target,” said Fred Lang, a member of an FBI anti-terrorism task force who was previously in the military. “Through my years as a firearms instructor, I’ve never seen that done.”


“There’s only one reason for that,” Lang said. “It’s a fire-and-maneuver tactic.”


We did that at summer camp (see the video here). We do that in USPSA matches all the time. Yet this is being used against these guys as if it were something essentially unheard of.


It may in fact be these guys were training to kill U.S. soldiers and should be sent to prison for a long time. But this one thing in and of itself should not be conclusive proof of evil intent. I am concerned of precedent being set.

Hitting the 957 yard target

Posted on by

Last Saturday most of the gun bloggers at the Rendezvous went to the range. Other reports and pictures from range day are here:

Yes. As nearly everyone else noted, it was on the cold side of comfortable. The temperature was about 35 F and when we arrived the winds varied from 10 to 20 MPH.


Derek deals with the cold and wind.

These were not the best of conditions for long range shooting but this range is for long range shooting and I wanted to do some long range shooting. I had not shot my .300 Win Mag since the year before at this same range. This range has targets out to nearly 1000 yards and this, more than anything else, is why I wanted to go to the Rendezvous.

Traction Control brought his Barrett .50 BMG and was setting up at the very end bench. This minimized the impact of the vicious muzzle blast on other shooters. I set up on the empty bench next to him but stood behind the line when someone was shooting the .50 to avoid the vicious muzzle blast. This extended the time for my set up as I measured the wind speed, wind direction, air pressure, the inclination to the various targets, and used my laser range finder to get the exact range to each of the targets. I was still making measurements and taking notes as everyone else went through two cycles of shooting and shutting down the range to change targets. I then used my HP-41CV calculator running a special version of Modern Ballistics to compute the necessary sight angle between the scope and the gun for the elevation. I didn’t bother with measuring the incline for the targets at 523 yards and under because they were all less than 8 degrees and the resultant shift in scope settings would be less than 0.1 MOA from assuming no inclination. By the time I was finally ready to shoot there was very little wind from side to side so I didn’t bother to run the numbers through the calculator.

Here are my notes:

October 11, 2008

Apparent Elevation (based on air pressure): 3500′
Wind: 10 to 20 MPH 45 degrees

Target

Range (yards)

Incline (degrees)

Sight Angle (MOA)

Paper

197

0

4.87

Plate 1

342

–

7.83

Plate 2

412

–

9.51

Plate 3

523

–

12.38

Plate 4

637

8

16.63

Plate 5

957

11

27.19

Having done all this I finally took my first shots at the paper target:


Five shot group at 197 yards at the upper A-zone of a USPA target.

I should have put a orange target dot on the center of the ‘A’ to have a better aiming point. It was difficult to get the cross hairs centered on the outline as I couldn’t see the ‘A’ itself. As it was I just concentrated on the horizontal because I was uncertain as to my windage zero but not my elevation zero. I expect most of the vertical was my fault and not the gun and/or ammo. Still, it was a less than 3/4 MOA group and I was satisfied with it.

I adjusted my windage zero and took some shots at the closer plates. I connected every time and was rewarded by seeing the plate swing and hearing a loud “thwack-clang” sound. I then asked Phil to spot for me as I adjusted for the 957 yard plate. The plate was difficult for a lot of people to find. Here is the context as seen through a 300 mm (think of it as 6X telescope) camera lens:


Plate and drum are in the upper left quadrant.


Close up of the 957 yard plate and 55 gallon drum.

A 55 gallon steel drum is about 22″ x 34″ and based on that the plate appears to be about 30″ x 16″. My mil-dot reticle estimates agree with this. The wind was very low but even a 3 MPH wind would result in a miss if I aimed dead on at this range. I waited until the wind appeared to be zero and pulled the trigger. Phil reported it hit just a bit to the right of center and dead on for elevation.

A first round hit at nearly 1000 yards. The geek wins!

The rest of the day was anti-climatic for me. I shot at the 957 yard plate a few more times but I ignored the wind and got hits only about half the time. I shot 10 rounds out of Traction Control’s .50 (I brought my own ammo) and got 7 out of 10 hits on the drum. The .50 has a much better BC (1.05 on the 750 grain A-MAX versus 0.533 on the 190 grain Sierra Match Kings I was shooting) which helped on windage but I suspect that gun didn’t have the inherent accuracy because the target was bigger and I got essentially the same hit ratio.

I emptied a magazine (four rounds) into each of the closer plates and knocked down the 523 yard target with my last shot. As it appeared everyone remaining from the Rendezvous was waiting on me I packed up and left. I was done as soon as I got the first round hit on the 957 yard plate. That was all I was really interested in anyway.

By the end of the day the apparent elevation had changed to 3700 feet but I ignored this as it made only about 0.1 MOA difference at 957 yards. Had it warmed up 10 degrees to 45 F that would have made a difference of 0.28 MOA in the same direction and I would have taken two clicks off of the scope setting for the most distant target to account for both.

Update: The picture below is from last year and the target is out of focus but it does give a sense of the size of the target as seen in a 14X scope. The drum is 2.5 Mils to the right of the plate which is almost centered in the crosshairs.


2007 view of the 957 yard target at the Reno Range.

Boomershoot rifle

Posted on by

Chris says it’s for Boomershoot. But the maximum range of targets at Boomershoot is only 700 yards. Therefore I think it might be for more than just Boomershoot. I’m thinking my evil plan might be working. Hmmm… so that would mean it is about Boomershoot, even if it isn’t for Boomershoot.

On our way home

Posted on by

Barb and I are sitting in the Reno airport waiting for our plane. I’m pretty sure I’m the last of the gun bloggers to leave town. Barb and I had dinner last night at the Black Bear Diner with The Conservative UAW Guy, his wife, Mr. Completely, and Keewee. Back at Circus Circus I chatted with them and Ride Fast, the last hanger ons, about airport security theater until about 21:00 when most of us said our good-byes. Mr. Completely, Keewee, Barb and I had breakfast together this morning and the Gun Blogger Rendezvous was over.


I have a few pictures and will post more later, particularly about our day at the range, but for now here is an odd gun I saw at the museum today with Barb. This gun was part of an exhibit on bootleggers:



Sawed off pistol. (Click for bigger.)


[Please excuse the poor photo quality. I used my cell-phone camera.]


I noticed one of their exhibits was mislabeled and they seemed very grateful when I corrected them. A device used to clean wheat had original markings saying it separated wheat from wild oats. But was labeled as tool for separating wild oats from chaff. Just me being nit-picky as usual.

Sparse posting from the Gun Blogger Rendezvous

Posted on by

Lack of sleep (up very late talking to other bloggers) combined with Barb wanting to use my computer meant I haven’t really posted anything about the rendezvous. Sorry, it’s not going to get much better for a few days.


Check out what others have been saying:


Packing for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous

Posted on by

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.

Educating the media on body armor and rifles

Posted on by

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.

Buy your Aimpoint before Christmas

Posted on by

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

Gun porn

Posted on by

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:



Quote of the day–Pat Kelley

Posted on by

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:



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]

Quote of the day–Kevin Baker

Posted on by

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]

We are winning

Posted on by

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.

Anti-motivational poster

Posted on by

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:


I wonder if the cops noticed

Posted on by

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.

Sarah Palin buttons

Posted on by

Daughter Xenia sent me these links:



I like the last two best:


Laser on Gun Blog 45

Posted on by

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.

Gun Blog 45

Posted on by

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: