Tag Archives: guns

Steyr calling

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Well, the year is approximately 0.8219% over and I haven’t bought a gun yet, so that’s progress.

However…..

My final gun of 2024 showed up today. The conversation at work went like this:

Me: Ok, I’m outta here for lunch. I need to go hunt down FedEx.

Boss: Picking up a gun?

Me: Yup. Want me to bring it by and show it off to you?

Boss: Absolutely!

And that how this monster wound up sitting on the table in the conference room.

It’s a Steyr HS50M1. A five-shot .50 BMG bolt action.

I suppose you’re asking “Hey Zed, don’t you already have a .50?” Yes I do. The Barrett is a long-recoil action, much like a Browning A5 shotgun or Rem Model 8/81 rifle…the whole barrel recoils back and forth with each shot. This is not a recipe for accuracy. But, for what the Barrett was designed for, anti-materiel, it’s just fine. You don’t need a huge degree of accuracy to hit a parked plane, a fuel bladder, a microwave dish, or pipeline manifold…the sort of targets anti-materiel guns are designed for. But if you do want precision in a .50, you’re probably going to have to lean towards a bolt action. My first choice was a Barrett M95 since I already had the 82A1, but finding one was a stretch. Plenty of M99’s out there for about $3500-4000, but I wanted a repeater.

I almost bought the first version of the HS50 when it was still a single-shot gun. Was about $3000 at the time and I just couldn’t swing the deal. Different story nowadays.

This is yet another five-foot gun thats gonna be expensive to top off with glass. But, if I can keep myself from buying any more guns for a while, maybe I can afford the glass something like this deserves…thats gonna be a research project all on its own.

And…I still have to buy the reloading gear.

Another smart question would be why get a .50 ‘long range’ rifle when the .338 Lapua will have similar range and be logistically easier to feed? Well, three reasons. The first is that I just like the idea of having something that .gov doesn’t like people having. Or, in other words, “Because I Can!”.  Second, it’s just dang cool. And third, the .50 has something that the .338 does not – comparatively better availability of AP, API, APIT, Tracer, and Raufoss ammo. And while I will happily go to my grave without ever needing AP, API, APIT, Tracer, and Raufoss ammo, they are all a hoot to shoot at the range at steel. And you never know what the future will bring. When Skynet starts cranking out T-800’s, a little API could be handy.

I have gone __3__ days without buying a gun this year.

Article – Armed for survival: How Oct 7 Hamas massacre transformed gun culture in Israel

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Interesting piece about the change in ‘gun culture’ in Israel.

For decades, firearm ownership in Israel was uncommon. Although military service ensured that many Israelis were trained with weapons, personal firearms were seen as more of a liability than a necessity. The strict licensing process deterred many, and Israelis trusted the state and its defense forces to protect them from terror threats, which took precedence over Israel’s low crime rates.

First, welcome to the party.

This article is interesting because, while you and I might support the idea of the more people discreetly arming themselves against unforeseen violence, there’s a cultural difference clearly in evidence here that is worth noting.

Gozlan is unnerved by what he sees as inadequate oversight in the licensing process. “At the range, I saw people who had never held a gun in their life, barely hitting their targets. It’s frightening to think these people are now walking around with firearms.”

Catch that “inadequate oversight in the licensing process”? The article continues with concerns that, while no one is saying that the citizens shouldn’t be able to have guns, the possibility that they are ‘untrained’ or lacking in skill poses a, to them, legitimate concern.

This almost feels like a setup for a testing scheme. In this country, broadly speaking, if where you live requires a license you’re application is mostly theoretical…few places require you to go to the range and shoot a particular score to qualify. Some do, yes, but most do not. A right, predicated on a test, is not a right. And that’s the crux of what I’m getting at.

‘Reaonable” and ‘common sense’ regulations that support this sort of testing are backdoor schemes to restrict access and ownership. Let’s say a municipality or state wants to restrict firearms ownership and access. First thing you do is create a licensing scheme with requirements. Now, make it impossible to meet those requirements. For example, you may need eight hours of classroom time with a qualified instructor….and then you make the classrooms unavailable, set the qualifications for instructor to be unobtainable, and you have, by default, created a roadblock even though on paper you have a clearly instructed process to follow.

You can add all sorts of roadblocks…the licensing office is only open on every other Thursday for two hours, you have to apply in person, you need to bring documents that are awkward or difficult to obtain, funding reductions reduce staff available for processing forms, etc, etc. This isn’t just theory….in places like California and New York it’s business as usual.

I bring this up because people will read the article above and nod their heads sagely that, yes, everyone should have the right to own a gun but…there needs to be training an competency standards. And those standards, naturally, are set by people who have a keen interest in people not owning guns.

So, before anyone asks how you could possibly be against a “safety measure” like competency and handling exams, remember that these mechanisms are easily jiggered to promote making ownership of guns so onerous as to be impossible.

Should you have competency and skill in handling your boomtoys? Absolutely. You should regularly practice for safety and accuracy. Should it be a requirement administered by .gov, under .gov guidelines and rules, as a condition of ownership? Absolutely not.

Hopefully the Israelis will not fall for that trick.

Ruger RXM

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The Ruger RXM I ordered last week arrived on Christmas Eve…like some sort of anti-Hallmark Christmas moment.

First impressions are that, other than lacking finger groves, this thing is about as Glock as you can get without an IP lawsuit. First thing I did was swap out barrels, slides, etc, off of my genuine Glock Gen3 guns and everything fit just fine.

Other than the removable fire control unit (FCU) this thing is a G19 that had a few tiny mods. The texturing is very nice…aggressive enough without feeling like youre grabbing sandpaper. The lack of finger grooves on the grip is really a personal pref thing…I don’t care either way, although I kinda prefer the grooves but don’t care if theyre not present. The magazine release seems a little more pronounced making for more economic motions when releasing the mag. Slide release was about as Glock as you could get. Sights, from the the factory, are metal, tall, and with a tritium front and serrated back…thats a big upgrade over what your basic Glock comes with. The slide is serrated fore and aft, which I like. The frame is a blue-grey color that, in my opinion, seems a bit weird…it addresses no need except perhaps to help Magpul use up all the Grey #2209 polymer pellets. The trigger….uhhhh….it’s the oddest trigger I’ve ever felt on a semiauto pistol. It feels like a long double-action on a tuned revolver. It seems to stack all the way to the break with the last bit of travel very reminiscent, to me, of a DA revolver. The only complaint that I can see immediately about this gun will be the trigger. For guys who shoot a lot, you can make it work…but you’ll be conscious and deliberate about your pull and followthrough in a way i don’t think you would with a regular Glock trigger. The slide is cut for an optic and, from what I’ve read, the Ruger is better than the Glock in terms of ability to mount an optic. Can’t speak to that since I havent tried it yet.

Does it fit Glock holsters? Fit all of mine, including leather ones, just fine. And of course it takes Glock mags.

So, lets say that it is, for the sake of argument, in all respects a Glock 19. What, if any, is the advantage to getting one over a G19 from a survivalists point of view? Well, let’s look at a few things starting with price.

To keep this an apples-vs-apples discussion I’m going to use my dealer pricing since that’ll  be pretty close to what most dealers will buy them at. Final retail prices can vary wildly depending on region and market. The Gen3 Glock is not available with an optics cut, so right off the bat, if you’re a red dot guy you are getting an advantage with the Ruger. My dealer shows a Gen3 G19 at $440 and the RMX at $340.

  • Ruger: Optics cut – Glock: No optic cut
  • Ruger: One Pmag – Glock: Two Glock factory mags
  • Ruger: Metal night sight – Glock: Three dot plastic sight

From a cost perspective, you get one extra mag with the Glock (a $20 value) for your $100. With the Ruger, you’re short one mag, but you gain an optic cut and a night sight made of metal for $100 less.

So why would someone choose the Ruger over the Glock. I think the answer to that is going to boil back down to the removable FCU.

Like the Sig 320, the shotgun-shell-sized metal FCU is the serial numbered part…its the ‘firearm’. This means that all the other parts…the barrel. slide, and frame, are completely unregulated. This means you can order those parts through the mail straight to your shipping address. Why is this significant?

Let’s say that, being a smart survivalist, you know that one size does not fit all. You like the Gen3 Glock platform for its reliability but you want your gun to have different sights..maybe even a red dot. And you’d like a more tactical color. And you might want a G17 size frame but with a G19 sized slide. Or you may want competition sights. Or a threaded barrel. To get all that on a G19 you would have to send your slide out for milling a red dot cut, throw away the plastic sights and replace with the sights you want, etc, etc.

Or, you buy an RXM FCU and then start shopping third-party. You order a stripped slide, your sights, a threaded barrel, a frame in the size and color you want, and you slap it all together. On the one hand, you now have your semi-bespoke RMX and no leftover parts, and on the other hand you have your semi-bespoke G19 with a few extra parts that you paid for and didnt use, and a bill for slide machining.

That modularity is about the only real advantage I see at this point.I am hoping that Ruger will bring out a full-size G17 version of the RXM soon, as well as MagPul offering up some different colors.

If you already have a rack full of G19’s or G17’s, is there a reason to get this gun? Probably not unless you want the satisfaction of just buying an FCU and ‘building’ exactly what you want from the ground up. If you don’t have any Glocks but have wanted to get into them, this might be a better choice. The price difference between the two is not insignificant.

What about mixing them both into your logistics? For the most part, it probably wont hurt anything. The FCU and a couple of its related parts are obviously proprietary to Ruger, but just about everything else is interchangeable with the Glock, so if you have a shoebox full of Glock spare parts you’re probably going to be well supplied for the RXM as well.

I think that for the survivalist, the biggest attraction of this gun will be the ability to just buy an FCU and then customize it from the ground up to be exactly what you want. This is a feature that is not unique to the Ruger (see the Sig P320) but the advantage to the Ruger is that once you put together your ideal gun you can then support it with dirt-common Glock parts. Also, I suspect the third-party market is already gearing up quickly for things like Flux Raider chasis, different color frames, different size frames, etc, etc.

When Ruger finally does make the FCU available by itself, I’ll probably get one just to play around in the aftermarket parts arena and put together something that fit my ideals.

Of course, all bets are off if I take this thing to the range and it doesn’t shoot well…but so far, I like what I see.

 

Ruger RXM

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Ruger has developed a bit of a reputation for ‘borrowing’ other gun makers designs and running with them. Usually they tweak it enough that its not a straight up clone. That level of discretion has apparently left the building. I’m guessing they call it the RXMbecause calling it the G19 was too obvious.

A collaboration between Magpul and Ruger, they’ve basically taken the ‘modular’ idea of the swappable fire-control unit from SIG and stuffed it into a not-a-Glock-19. Cleverly, Ruger seems to be letting the polymer masters at Magpul handle the frames while Ruger handles the metal bits. Makes sense.

I have a SIG 320 with the swappable FCU and it’s an interesting concept…buy the serial-numbered FCU and then you can change out your frame,slide,barrel, etc, with unregulated parts…much like how a stripped AR lower opens up a huge avenue of ‘customization’. If you live in a place where there’s a limit on how many guns you can own, this is a nice workaround to having a full-size, a compact, a ‘race gun’, etc. all with only one ‘firearm’.

So you have huge customization with the FCU concept, takes Glock mags, have early third-party support from Magpul (who are making the frames, it seems), optic cuts, steel sights, etc. And I’m seeing them at $400~ or less, dealer cost.  Assuming Ruger doesn’t do it’s usual new-product-recall, they might have finally created the polymer striker gun they’ve been trying and failing at for years.

Is there a reason to get this rather than the SIG 320? Glock magazine ubiquity might suggest so. Is there a reason to get this rather than the Glock? SIG-style FCU modularity seems like a big sell. And Magpul will be offering this in all sortsa colors, I’m sure.

This might actually turn Rugers amazing always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride history of LE contracts on its head. I need to get one of these to play with.

ETA: Also, mad props for not incorporating an interchangeable backstrap system. At least, not yet… I suppose aftermarket frames might incorporate them, but I find them to be almost useless. Also, my vendor shows dealer price at $340 which seems reasonable.

Glock 17 Gen3 cop trade-ins $300

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AimSurplus has a bunch of LE-tradein Glock 17’s on the block. $299 ea. for Gen3 17’s with night sights and in original case. One mag.

Since I have plenty of Magpul G9 mags here, I wasn’t concerned about the guns coming with only one mag apiece. A $300 G17 will always grab my attention. But cop guns are notorious for being beaten up aesthetically while being mechanically good. Ordered three and they showed up yesterday:

Absolutely excellent condition. Night sights still have plenty of glow. Barrels need a cleaning at the chamber end as there’s a lot of fouling on the feed ramps, but thats five minutes with Hoppes and a q-tip. I ordered three, which came out to $17.51 to ship for each gun. That puts my basis as $317.51 for each very clean G17. Strong recommend.

They still have them in stock as of today, so if you’ve got a buddy with an FFL, or you’ve a LGS who does reasonable transfer fees, I’d say  jump on this deal.

Someone will ask why Gen3 when there are trade-in Gen4 and Gen5 out there. The Gen 4 made some changes to the ejector/extractor, I believe, that caused some problems. Gen5 is alright I suppose but interchangeable backstraps aren’t a thing in my world. The Gen3, IMO, is the best version of the Glock. In fact, Glock still makes the Gen3 for various agency commitments.

I see this as an opportunity to grab yourself an ideal pistol at a bargain price. Passing the info along to you guys, do with it what you will.

Article – The oldest known firearm in the U.S. unearthed in Arizona

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A bronze cannon recently recovered by researchers in Arizona appears to be the oldest known firearm ever found in the continental United States. According to experts, analysis indicates the 40 lbs weapon was likely owned by one of history’s most famous and notorious conquistadors, although he may never have fired it in battle.

A 500-year old swivel gun is an interesting find. My favorite, though much younger, is the ’73 Winchester found propped against a tree.

Every now and then someone digs up an ancient, pitted, rusted ‘relic’ here in Montana. The stories those guns could tell………..

9mm AR carbines

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Anytime anyone makes a post about a pistol-caliber carbine there is a contingent of people who feel compelled to demand the poster explain how they feel served by a carbine in that caliber as opposed to the carbines ‘normal’ chambering of 5.56.

I’d like to save everyone some time and bandwidth by skipping that argument and just move on to the guns.

Although I have dozens of 5.56 AR carbines, I didn’t have any in 9mm. I do have some Mp5 clones, and a couple Ruger PC Carbine/Chargers that take Glock mags, but I’ve been wanting something that had all the function and form factor of the AR platform.

When you start looking at 9mm ARs you notice something interesting – very few Glock-compatible ARs have last shot bolt hold opens. This is because of the mechanical contortions of getting such a device to work with a magazine that is wildly different dimensionally from an AR mag. Most manufacturers simply sell ARs that don’t have the last shot hold open, but…some do.

I ordered up a carbine from Angstadt Arms. Their website said that their guns would lock open on an empty mag and that’s what I was looking for. Their website also said their barrel was threaded 1/2×28 which would let me use a couple of the 9mm cans I have here on the shelf.

Surprisingly, while the AA carbine lived up to the last shot hold open, they did NOT thread their barrel 1/2×28. For reasons that I am sure make no sense, they threaded it 1/2×36. I cannot overstate what an inconvenience this is. This means that I need to order a different adaptor for each 9mm suppressor I wanna use on this thing.

What I wound up doing is getting a tri-lug adaptor for the gun, and then a tri-lug adaptor for the Obsidian suppressor. So, at least this way I can use the tri-lug on my Mp5 clones as well.

However, I fired off an email to Angstadt Arms asking them why the rifle I purchased did not have the threading that was clearly denoted on their website description. No answer yet.

And, because one is none, I also ordered KE Arms version of the same gun except built on their one-piece polymer lower. This should be a very lightweight gun. Will post about it when it gets here.

Building the wall

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I finally received all the parts for putting together the gunwall I ordered up from Gallowtech.I spent most of today putting it together and getting it set up the way I wanted.

Normally, I’d share pictures but, unfortunately, this is a PerSec issue so I can’t really show the pictures. However, I can say that it does a very nice job of helping me get the gunclutter problem under control.

It actually looks not too much different than this. Just….more of it.

It wasn’t cheap, but it really does make a difference in terms of getting most of the stray boomtoys rounded up and secured. It’s definitely one of those things that will not convey if I ever sell this place….that sucker is going with me to the new place.

The modularity is what really make it worth the money, for me. As my acquisitions change or evolve, I can adjust my storage system to match. That’s pretty much the reason I didn’t just sit down with a buncha lumber, some deck screws, a chop saw, and make my own.

And, honestly, it looks pretty cool too.

Not every survivalist ‘needs’ this many guns. Tappan’s “Survival Guns” is considered by many to be a bit over-the-top in terms of guns he recommend that the savvy survivalist own. I don’t recall the exact number, but once you got past defensive pistols, working pistols, pocket pistols, hunting pistols, etc, Tappan was advocating something like 15 handguns. Contrast this with the fact that most people will not own fifteen different handguns over an entire lifetime. Heck, we all know that one old guy who owns something like two or three handguns and he’s had them ever since he got out of the Army after Korea. My ownership numbers definitely trend towards the far side of that bell curve.

My way of thinking has always been to assume that what I have now is all I’ll ever be able to have, therefore I need to have enough to last me against all the possible futures that could occur in the next 25 years. So…a little gun heavy. Guns seldom go down in value, so even if no legislative changes occur to preclude future purchase, I’m still ahead of the game by beating inflation..

But, overall, I like the Gallowtech product. It seems well made, is modular, looks good, and has enough accessories and ways to arrange them that I think it should fit my needs for now. But, most importantly, I am very glad to have all these dang guns out from underfoot.

Rangetime with the FN

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Took the FN TAC3 out for a spin yesterday. I had held off on going to the range with it because I was waiting for the optic to arrive. And…it arrived yesterday.

Its an Eotech XPS2. I had been looking at various ‘dot scopes’ and wanted to give the Eotech a try. They have a reputation for durability, and I’m looking for end-of-the-world resilience. I have a dot on my MP5A2 clone, a Sig Romeo XT Pro and I like it a lot…strong recommend. I’m rapidly becoming a fan of these types of optics, but I am making sure not to like them at the expense of my iron sights. Even as durable as these things are purported to be, with battery life measured in years, I still make sure every gun has a set of sighted-in iron sights. Because.

Anyway…. Took it to the range, sighted in, and started shooting the steel plates. The FN has a military trigger but it’s got a smooth travel and good break. Actually a very nice trigger. Accuracy was also quite good, even with the 1x of the optic. I might have to get a magnifier just because. I only put about sixty rounds through it since it was getting late and I was doing this right after work…and darkness is coming earlier.

Overall, I really like this AR. I need to really sit down with it, solidly rest it, and see what it can do but so far I’m really pleased. I’ll be swapping the muzzle device for something conducive to a suppressor, drop a light on it, and that’ll be that. I really look forward to shooting this thing some more.

Do I like it better than my Colt? Well…yes, but thats because the Colt is in ‘classic’ M4 attire with front sight tower and round handguards. A capable and good rig, no doubt…but it doesn’t lend itself as easily to what I’m wanting to do. But…still a nice gun.