Although it is spring here in Montana, winter is never more than an hour away at any given moment. Folks don’tbelieve me, but we had the “Fourth of July Blizzard” way back in the 80’s. The short version is, no matter what time of year it is…in this state if the sun isn’t out, and youre in the high country, and Mom Nature has been drinking….well, it can get downright cold. Middle of the night temperatures in the 20’s and 30’s in August aren’t unheard of. Anyway, my point is that it can get cold here any time. So, I really found this video about cold weather and it’s affects on our favorite boomtoys to be quite interesting.

The AR did pretty fair…but 50k psi will probably move even the most frozen bolt carrier. I would have liked to see the test done on the .308 rifles like the FAL, HK, and M1A but Im sure the results would have been similar. I’ve gone hunting a bunch of times with the PTR-91 in winter and never had any problems.The most likely scenario for a rifle getting enough moisture in it to freeze is when you come into a warm building after being out in the cold all day. Condensation occurs and the rifle ‘sweats’. Grab the rifle and run out the door and that condensation freezes. It’s my understanding that in the north countries they avoid this by simply leaving the guns outside.

One problem I have experienced has been with a couple SKS rifles that, no matter how much I cleaned and soaked them, still have bits of cosmoline or grease that would solidify in the cold and cause problems. Most notably sluggish firing pin strikes. Clearly there was still residue on the firing pins and in the firing pin channels. Colossal pain in the ass to get it all.

Some people go the extra step of degreasing their guns for the winter and applying a ‘dry’ lube. That’s great for dealing with the congealed lubricant problem, but youre still going to have issues if snow/ice gets in the gun, melts, and refreezes. (And, hey, sleet/snow/rain getting in the bore, freezing, and causing an obstruction is always a major concern. Play it safe, get some gun rubbers, and use them! And while we’re on the subject, I usually use muzzle covers like these for guns that are in storage. Keeps spiders and other crap from getting in the bore and creating problems. And even then, when taking guns outta storage always check the bores before shooting.)

Handguns, interestingly, haven’t had the same problems in my experience. The Glock (naturally) works just fine in the zero-degree weather since lubrication is a ‘nice to have’ with the Glock rather than a ‘must have’. While I have never had parts break from the cold, I have seen a few plastic magazines break when dropped at the range when it was really cold. Something to think about there.

And finally, cold weather puts a heck of a whammy on batteries. If you’re using a piece of gear that uses batteries, swap those batteries out for lithiums. More expensive, but much better for cold weather use.

By the by, ‘cold’ in Montana isn’t the same as ‘cold’ in, say, North Carolina. When I say ‘cold’, I’m talking about anything around 0 degrees.

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Sidebar: Welcome back from hiatus Self Sufficient Mountain Living.

I’m rapidly losing interest in ‘The Walking Dead’. It seems that the writers have gotten lazy and any time they need to come up with a tension-filled episode they resort to the cheap and easy plot device of someone being taken hostage. *yawn*

However, since TWD is over for the season, the companion series, ‘Fear The Walking Dead’, has resumed. Whereas TWD was starting to bore me, FTWD continues to enrage me. The ‘we have to help them!’ mentality, coupled with a stunning failure to grasp the severity of the situation, drives me nuts. In fact the only reason I’m bothering to watch it is for the excellent, subdued, performance by Ruben Blades. His ‘seen it all’ demeanor and weary acceptance of the new way of life is compelling, and his character is played very well by him. Other than that….I’ll be thrilled when some of the main cast members start getting killed off.

At the moment, I should probably be worrying about other things than television programs…it’s an election year with a truly grim outlook. Although election day seems a long way off, you and I both know that the real panic buying starts much earlier. It seems like every election we say ‘this is the most important election ever’..and it is – until the next one comes along.

From an email with the guys at PTR:

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Serial range for paddle release
From: Zero (zero@commanderzero.com)
Date: Sun, April 10, 2016 2:39 am
To: “Info@ptr91.com” <Info@ptr91.com>

 Thanks for getting in touch with us.

Due to us not always building our guns in sequential order, there is no way to know if a gun will have a paddle mag release by the serial number.

The best way to tell if a gun has a paddle mag release or not is to go off of the model number (when we started offering the paddle magazine releases and new 5/8×24″ threading, we changed the model numbers for all of our products).  Models with the paddle mag release and new 5/8×24″ threading will have models numbers starting with “PTR”, which will be followed by 3 digits (old models without the paddle mag release will have 6 digit model numbers in the following format “915XXX” for standard models, or “900XXX” for CA compliant models).  For instance, the model number of a G.I. with the paddle mag release will be PTR100.  The model number of a G.I. R with the paddle mag release will be PTR101.

I hope this helps.

Best Regards,
Chris Petersen

Customer Service Manager
PTR Industries
101 Cool Springs Dr. | Aynor, SC 29511
Tel: 843.358.2222 | Fax: 843.358.2223
sales@ptr91.com | www.ptr91.com

Comic book movies are pretty big these days. Of special note is the theme that is being brought up in these new movies. The recent Batman versus Superman movie, and the upcoming Captain America movie, both address a very interesting sociological idea that , to me, seems to be one that comes up every so often and needs to be put down like a rabid skunk.

Over 30 years ago, a ‘groundbreaking’ graphic novel came out – The Dark Knight Returns. Succinctly, it was about an aged and retired Batman who throws off retirement, squeezes back into the tights, and takes up the mantle once more for a final showdown. Large parts of the fight from the book are replayed in the recent movie. But what is interesting is that in the book the various superheroes are gone. Government decided they were too ‘uncontrolled’ and forced them to retire or leave the planet…or else. Superman remains as a ‘licensed superhero’ and agent of the government, secretly using his powers as ordered by the government.

Fast forward a couple years and ‘Watchmen’ hits the screens. Same underlying sinister theme – superheroes are loose cannons. Operating independently,  without government control, they are too dangerous to be allowed to continue. They are forced to retire, go rogue, or work for the government.

Move ahead another ten years and you have ‘Iron Man 2’, where the government demands that ‘the Iron Man weapon” be turned over to the government for the benefit of ‘the American people’.

In the most recent Superman movie the question is raised – if Superman is so all-powerful, what prevents him from becoming a threat to the rest of the world? He can do things no one else can, and has amazing powers..doesn’t he therefore have a responsibility to the world to selflessly, tirelessly, save it from itself?

This is coming to a head in the new Captain America movie where various superheroes have to pick sides (the ‘Civil War’ storyline). When the .gov demands that superheroes be under .gov authority and control some agree that they need to be regulated, and some wish to remain independent. Naturally, this leads to massive CGI battles between the two sides.

See the new Deadpool movie? Colossus, the big shiny X-Man, has a minor role in the movie. In his first appearance in the comics, way back when, he was approached by Professor X at his Soviet collective farm. Xavier asks him to join the X-Men because of his newly manifested powers. Colossus, being a good Soviet, was dubious..believing his powers belonged to the State. Xavier, of course, tells him that his powers are his but that he has a duty to mankind as a whole.

The common (or is it communist?) theme is that if you have some sort of special ability, talent, or resource, you have a moral responsibility to use it for the greater good.

What’s this got to do with you, you ask? Well, you could argue that this decades long theme of self-sacrifice, obligation to ‘the greater good’, and social responsibility is part of a larger indoctrination process. But..I don’t believe that. What I do believe, and I think you should too, is that more and more people are growing up in their impressionable years with the idea being pushed at them constantly that you have a duty to others, they have a right to demand of you, and that any resistance to that notion is selfish, anti-establishment (or anti-government), or just plain misanthropic.

We see it from time to time when someone says that you have to help..after all, you have so much and they have nothing. We’ve all heard stories about how in times of crisis the governments (local ones, usually) will seize someones resources to be used to alleviate others suffering. Sometimes the police and city government commandeer your four-wheel drive vehicle after a major blizzard, and sometimes they help themselves to your surplus store inventory because they need it and you have it.

When the power goes out, and you have your generator humming away, it’ll be unsurprising how many people will ‘demand’ that you accommodate them because ‘you have it and I dont’. You have a responsibility, you see, to the less prepared and less fortunate. (And, yes, the less intelligent.)

The last couple decades of movies have brought this notion of social obligation and social responsibility to the point where the word ‘individualist’ is seen as a pejorative term. There have been a few attempts to spread a better message…Joss Whedon’s Serenity movie (and Firefly series) was an excellent message of individual-resisting-overreaching-government. (And was, in fact, basically a retelling of post Civil War Reconstruction society.) To a lesser degree, shows like The Walking Dead demonstrate agency rather than passive ‘governemnt will save us’ attitudes. The exceptionally (so far) lame ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ companion series had some ‘government is not always the answer’ moments in there as well.

I love comic book movies. I thought Deadpool was the best one in years (because, hey, rated R), and the Captain America movie will be one of the best, I think. But be careful not to fall into the trap of ignoring the underlying message that is sometimes there…the notion that anyone ‘better’ than the rest must be reined in and controlled for the benefit of the ‘greater good’, that the ‘haves’ have a duty to sacrifice for the ‘have nots’ (or ‘will nots’), and that regulation and government oversight is a benevolent and just form of ‘justice’. Whether youre wearing tights with a big ‘S’ on the chest, or wearing 5.11 pants and a Leatherman tool, someone is thinking that you ‘have to’ because ‘you can’…and if you won’t, they’ll use the power of law and .gov to make you live up to ‘your responsibility’.

I guess I spoke too soon…ol’ Johnny Trochman was there at the show after all. While he is definitely a proud wearer of the tinfoil chapeau he does have a very nice selection of things that would be useful to those in our particular interest. Plus, for pure fun and games, nothing beats a case of these:

The parachute flares are especially fun if you’ve a creative mind and a modicum of McGyver in you…coupled with a rat trap, cordage, and a few odds and ends, they can be used to make perimeter warning devices. Plus, theyre just fun to play with. If you’ve the mind, you can use the smoke cannisters just as creatively. It would be interesting to dissect one and see if the pull-ring igniter could be replaced with something electronic.

AR and AK rifles were aplenty, though there did seem to be a lack of used Glocks there. Ammo was available at the usual prices, but, as is the norm, .22 ammo was somewhat scarce.

The only thing that made me covetous was a rather worn HK91 for $1800. Honestly, I’d take the $1800 and buy a pair of PTR-91 rifles and not feel that i’m really missing anything other than a little prestige.

All in all, a rather good show. There’s one here in town at the fairgrounds this weekend and I plan on walking through. Its a rather smallish show, but any gun show is usually better than no gun show.

Grrr….I hate when good gun deals come my way and I’m not in position to take advantage. I’ve an opportunity to pick up a couple FALs built by a well-regarded gunsmith, and a parts kit, for a stupidly low price. And, of course, I don’t have the resources to do it.

FALs are great guns. To me , their weak spot are the marginal sights. Otherwise, I like them for their ergo and reliability. I think the gas-piston AR10 is probably the pinnacle of .308 MBR…AR ergonomics and FAL reliability. If, that is, the design can handle it…. need to see more endurance testing. But, a guy I knew had a SIG AR10 and it seemed like the perfect .308.

Tell you what, though…whether youre a fan of the FAL, AR10, G3, or even the M1A, get them and their mags now because it’s a certainty they ain’t gonna get cheaper between now and the end of the year.