Tag Archives: guns

Glock 40 replacement barrel in .40

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Its only been in the last few years I’ve been able to buy the guns I’ve always wanted. The catalyst was after finally sucking it up and getting my degree, I started making okay money. I have an advantage in that I don’t have any debt..no mortgage, no car payments, no nothin’. As a result, whatever I do make, I wind up keeping a large chunk of. This means that what might be considered ‘just enough to get by’ for some folks is ‘plenty’ for me….although more is always better.

One of the things I’d been wanting for a while was a Glock 10mm as a belt gun for when I was out in the boonies. And, I got one. I threw some quality night sights on it, bought a half dozen mags, a lovely flap holster, and thats pretty much all I really need to do. Except…10mm ain’t cheap. Nor plentiful. But what is cheap(er) and plentiful is .40 S&W. Turns out the folks at Lone Wolf Distributors make a .40 S&W barrel for the Glock 40. I suppose I might have to change the recoil spring out but given how factory 10mm is watered down to almost .40 levels, I’ll bet all I need is the barrel change.

This’ll be a somewhat more affordable way to practice since I have gobs of .40 S&W ammo laying around from the local PD. And, I suppose, from a preparedness standpoint it’s a good idea to have a couple Glocks laying around in .40 since there still seems to be a ton of badges out there still using the .40 S&W.

Personally, I plan on picking up some 200 gr. bullets and loading them up more to what the 10mm was designed for. If modern 10mm loads are loaded down to hot .40 S&W levels, why wouldn’t I just get a .40 S&W instead? Nope…this’ll be a bit of a project for the reloading bench. If I have to ruin a bruin then I want as much metal going downrange as possible.

It’s nice that I finally have the career path that lets me afford stuff like this. I just wish I had more time available to take advantage of the new toys. But, I guess thats the trade off…time vs money.

Sig Romeo4T Pro followup

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Last year I purchased a Sig Romeo4T Pro as my entry into the world of dot sights. I was pretty taken with it at the time and I thought I’d revisit it since some time has now gone by.

Still think it’s great. I havent turned it off since I got it. It sits on top of my MP5A2 clone and its still functioning on the original battery. The ‘shake awake’ feature has performed as advertised – when I put the gun in the rack, the sight turns itself off after a couple minutes. When I pick it up the scope exits its sleep mode and is on. What this means is, I don’t ever need to turn the thing on or off. Just leave it on and when I put it down it’ll go to sleep and save battery life, and when I pick it up it immediately comes back on ready to use…no switches to fumble with. The 9mm in a carbine like this isn’t exactly a long-range cartridge so the lack of magnification isn’t, in my opinion, an issue for this particular type of gun and it’s particular anticipated use.However…I can ring the plates at 100 yards with it, so there’s that.

I’ve shot it a bunch and am still very pleased with it. So much so, in fact, that I’m gonna be picking up another one or two for some other longarms.

However, I decided to bump up a notch and get a Romeo8T. I’m gonna mount that on my JAKL and see how I like it.

So far, I’ve been pretty pleased with the SIG dots. And by the way, Palmetto has announced they are working on a .308 JAKL and I am very excited at the prospect.

The Romeo4T, by the way, is apparently what Obi Wan Nairobi used at his shopping mall bullet party. Who knew?

Ruger LC Carbine in .45 ACP

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For you dinosaurs who have been waiting for Ruger to come out with a .45 AARP carbine, your time is now.

I am utterly fascinated that they did this in their somewhat lackluster LC Carbine pattern. You would think the PC Carbine platform would have been the first choice. I’m guessing it’s because the frame sizes were not compatible…the 9/40 versions of the PC Carbine/Charger were probably too small for the .45 (and I bet 10mm) cartridges.

Making it take .45 Glock magazines is just a good idea. Making it take a proprietary magazine of some kind would have opened another avenue for all sorts of headaches. Better to let someone else spend all the money on magazine development and production.

Other than some oddball guns made by small AR manufacturers, and the AutoOrdnance guns, there havent been any .45 ACP carbines from a major US manufacturer since the Marlin Camp Carbines from 30 years ago. (Those Marlins were great guns, by the way…but, oy, they beat their stocks up somethin’ fierce.)

Since .45 ACP is natively subsonic, I’d expect that alot of guys with .45 suppressors are gonna be really excited by this.

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

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It’s the dang near last day of the year. I thought I was done buying guns for 2023. Done, I tell you!

And then I get the text message from a gunstore  buddy: “You might wanna come by”

Well, poop….this is not gonna be cheap. Let’s open the chute and ride this thing:

Beretta Cougar in .40. Nothing special there. And a Colt Series 80 Combat Commander that someone put some work into. Check out that squared triggerguard. Red Ramp front and an ancient MMC rear sight. Extendo beavertail and aftermarket trigger. Other internals seemed factory. Needs a cleaning badly, has some minor freckling.

“But..but…Zero, you said three guns. Where’s the third?”

Ah, the third one. The third one, me boyo, is the whole reason I bought this package. The third one scratches a 30-year-old itch. Notice that the two guns above are sitting on a wooden presentation box. Whats in the box? Why…the stuff that dreams are made of:

That, mi amigos y amigas, is a Smith and Wesson Model 27 with a factory five-inch barrel.

:::mic drop:::

Back in the mid-90’s I had a lovely 5″ Model 27 and in a college kid cash crunch I pawned it for $150 and never got it back. There are two guns I have bitterly regretted selling in my life…My HK93A3 (bought for $600 in 1986!) and that Model 27. And now, I have another.

But, my tastes have changed a bit since then. While I love S&W revolvers, I keep a practical eye on things like durability and reliability…which means a 5″ GP-100 would be a better choice than this 5″ M27. But nostalgia. And it does no harm to have a few safe queens.

That M27 was the reason I bought the other two guns. The Cougar is nigh-impossible to sell. Since Stoeger made their version no one wants the oddball Beretta. The Colt will probably go out the door too….I’m not a 1911 guy. But that Smith….hmmmmm.

Glock Redux

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Kings Firearms Online was having a sale on some LE trade-in Gen 4 G17’s. Well, heck, for $300 apiece, why not? I prefer Gen3 Glocks for various reasons but these should be quite easy to flip for $350-375 to someone wanting a Christmas gift to themselves or a friend.While I have a big ‘ol stack of Ruger P95DCs sitting around, I have an almost as large pile of Glock 9mms. I’m kinda wishing I’d picked up more than just these three. Theyre in typical copgun condition: bluing wear, grips nicked and scratched from years of being a ghetto referee, but mechanically fine. Face it, copguns just don’t get shot that much. They get banged around a heck of a lot, but mechanically theyre almost always like new.

Its been a long time since I’ve seen police trade-in Glocks in 9mm for sale but when it happens, I try to go deep.

Article – The Guns Were Said to Be Destroyed. Instead, They Were Reborn.

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Remember, kids…when the other side doesn’t like something that our side does that is perfectly legal..well..thats a “loophole”.

When Flint, Michigan, announced in September that 68 assault weapons collected in a gun buyback would be incinerated, the city cited its policy of never reselling firearms.

“Gun violence continues to cause enormous grief and trauma,” Mayor Sheldon Neeley said. “I will not allow our city government to profit from our community’s pain by reselling weapons that can be turned against Flint residents.”

But Flint’s guns were not going to be melted down. Instead, they made their way to a private company that has collected millions of dollars taking firearms from police agencies, destroying a single piece of each weapon stamped with the serial number and selling the rest as nearly complete gun kits. Buyers online can easily replace what’s missing and reconstitute the weapon.

This is interesting because I’ve done a bunch of business with Gunbusters on GunBroker. Theyre an excellent source for getting spare parts for a gun ‘just in case’. The pearl-clutching in this article is priceless. If recycling gun parts is somehow a safety problem for the public, then by extension the purchase of spare parts through other channels should be just as much of a (non)problem. That is, of course, the direction this will eventually go to as more and more parts will be considered controlled or, more likely, prohibited from distribution through various means….social pressure on carriers, advertisers, etc.

The culture war never stopped, guys…sometimes it just quiets a bit as folks reposition themselves in their trenches.

 

Nuke ’em till the glow

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Its always an interesting development when  package shows up with this curious label:No, it isn’t depleted uranium .308 rounds. (Those get hand delivered by guys who don’t like to use their real names.) Nah, its a very mundane and unexciting set of Trijicon HD night sights for my Glock 10mm.

Fiber optic is used alot for front sights these days and while they glow nicely in most light my experience has shown them to be fragile, prone to breaking or falling out, and susceptible to damage from gun cleaning solvents. I’d rather spend the hundred bucks and swap out for some heavy-duty steel sights with self-luminating dots than be surprised when I pull the gun from the holster and wonder where the orange glowy thing at the front went.

I’d shopped around a bit and looked at the various brands of night sights…Trijicon, Ameriglo, Glock, etc…and decided that for the difference in price I may as well go with the Trijicons. They are kinda the big name in radioactive glowy sights.

Are night sights really a necessity? Especially when every gun on the market these days usually comes with a rail to accommodate a light? Mmmmm….its subjective. For guns that I carry all the time, I definitely want the night sights. It’s dark half the time, right? And while I could buy a holster that would accommodate a mounted light, by the time you buy that particular specialized holster, and add a good light, you’ve spent what you would have spent on quality night sights.

Am I saying that night sights are a substitute for a mounted light? Heck no. I’m just saying that most of the time we don’t carry a mounted light on the gun we carry every day under out jackets and shirts…so having night sights is good idea.

One other thing I like is that for my nightstand gun (which does carry a mounted light) having night sights makes the gun easy to find in the dark.

Oh, and before I forget…..sight adjustment tools are very much worth the money to have. A hammer and punch is no way to sight in a pistol.