This seems to be rather upsetting to some people who formerly supported organizations like Everytown. And, one of those supporters, said the quiet part out loud:
“Our mission is to reduce gun violence and keep people from having guns in their homes and here you are giving a gun safety class that encourages gun ownership.”
Did you catch that? Gun safety..reasonable, ‘commonsense’ gun laws….but what they really want is to “keep people from having guns in their homes”.
If I had a friend who wanted to learn how to shoot, do I send them to the program run by the organization that is trying to tamp down my civil rights? Or do I send them the othe program run by the organization that claims to support my rights as it collects and spends money like a multi-level marketing scheme? Correct answer: neither. I take them to the range as often they like and show them what they need to know. Would I trust some outfit like Everytown to teach someone how to shoot without them slipping in some of the ‘common sense’ and ‘reasonable’ ideas about ‘gun control safety’? Heck no, but I also wouldn’t trust an NRA-sponsored course to be politically neutral either.
The best I can hope for is that whoever is taking the class, from organizations on either side of the issue, is intelligent enough to see the different perspectives and do their own research and make up their own mind. But, thats asking alot from the humans we seem to have these days.
Some time at the range today. I had a new-ish pistol I came into that I wanted to try. A S&W M&P in .45 ACP. Historically, S&W autos kinda sucked but I really like the M&P. Whats interesting is that this one, in .45 AARP, is a double-stack magazine but the grip is so narrow that you wouldnt think its any bigger than a 9mm. The interchangeable backstraps are the secret and, I gotta say, compared to a .45 Glock, this thing is much nicer in the hand. Also, it shot quite well.
While Im on the subject, I don’t know who needs to hear this but if you wanna save some money on buying self-adhesive target dots, head down to the hardware store and buy yourself a roll of blaze orange duct tape. Presto – turns everything and anything into a target. And, it does it cheaply.
Tear it off to whatever size you want, slap it onto a paper plate or backing of butcher paper, and you’re ready to go. And….hopefully your target skills will improve. Or not.
I have a couple 9mm ARs. One is the Angstadt Arms version, which I recommend, and the other is the KE Arms version that uses the polymer lower receiver/stock combo. Both have their advantages…the KE arms is very, very light. The Angstadt has a last-shot hold open.
I had picked up a second Trijicon MRO last week and needed to get it sighted in for the KE Arms gun, so thats what I did today. Once dialed in, it was quite easy to chew the center out of the target dots. It’s a handy little carbine that shares magazines and ammo with my Glocks.
Every single time I post about pistol caliber carbines it invariably leads to “if youre going to carry a carbine why wouldnt you carry it in a carbine caliber” or “pistol caliber carbines are stupid” discussions in comments. Every single time. So, for the sake of my sanity and to save everyone some time, lets hit the search function and just go reread the older arguments and explanations.
Speaking of 9mm. I was flipping around some blogs and came across this picture:
My current carry ammo is the Speer Gold Dot. People I have talked to who would be ‘in the know’ say that it is the pellet of choice for people who have to deal with things that have language skills. I had a disappointing experience with HydraShocks once and, while recognizing it may have just been a fluke, I have been adamant about not using them. I think my nightstand gun still has Black Talons in it, which clearly shows how long its been since I rotated my ammo out of that particular gun. My ‘house gun’, the MP5SD clone, uses Hornady subsonic hollowpoints. I usually prefer 124 gr. in my unsupressed guns. Even FMJ will ‘do the job’ as long as ‘you hit them in the right spot’, but thats a rather stupid argument. A baseball bat will ‘do the job’ if you just ‘hit them in the right spot’, but I can tell you with experience under my belt that in the real world you don’t always get the luxury of setting up your shot to be perfect. Sometimes you gotta be the first with the most and when that happens youre gonna want a little bit of extra for that ‘margin of error’. Could you go elk hunting with a .22 Mag? Absolutely. Is it a good idea? Definitely not. Sure, a perfect shot in the perfect spot with the .22 Mag will drop an elk, but you don’t always get the perfect….and when that happens you want to have extra mass, extra speed, extra power on your side to make up for less-than-perfect placement.
The list of guns that I regret selling is actually pretty short. Probably because I tend to buy and hold. But, there are a couple I really wish I’d kept. Probably the number one is an HK93A3 that I bought in 1986 for the princely some of $600. I was a poor 19-year-old college kid and this was a major purchase. It was the best 5.56 gun I’ve ever owned. It was accurate, utterly reliable, ate even the crappiest ammo, and was fun to shoot. Unfortunately, even in 1986, spare mags were spendy and I eventually traded it off for a CAR-15 which could be fed with $5 magazines. I have regretted selling it ever since.
However… I did not regret it enough to buy another one. These days, a clean HK93A3 with a few mags is easily north of $4-5k. While the .308 version, the HK91, has been cloned by various makers, some good and some really ungood, the HK93 was never really copied as much. Special Weapons, Vector, and Century have dabbled with them in the past, but they are rarely seen. And…most HK clones are just not very good. It’s tough to match the German stuff when theyve amortized the startup costs years ago and have literally decades of experience, versus some little shop that has to start from scratch.
How did PTR do it? Well, in Victor Kiam fashion, they bought the company. See, when a country adopts a weapons system like a rifle or pistol, they often require it to be made in their country. (Waves at SIG USA) Portugal wanted to arm itself with G3’s, so HK built a plant in Portugal. When the G3 was no longer used or supported by Portugal, some guy went in and bought the factory, boxed it up, and shipped it to Connecticut…HK tooling, HK parts, HK everything. Thats the easy way…don’t re-invent the wheel; buy the wheel factory.
Thing is, no military ever really adopted the HK93 ( or its various guises….43, 53, 33, etc) in any major numbers, so there was no big factory to switch to consumer production. But…the Turks managed it, apparently. MKE produces MP5 clones and is out there with a ‘pistol’ version of the HK93. See, you cant bring in the rifle version because of import bans…but you can bring in a ‘pistol’. What you do with that pistol, regarding a stock or arm brace, once you get it in the US…well, thats between you, your credit card, and HKParts.net.
One of the big headaches of the HK93 was magazines. Few and far between. And expensive when found. Well, MKE makes the gun so they may as well make mags. As a result there are polymer mags out there that are very derivative of the G36 mags in style and appearance. And AC Unity, who seemingly came out of nowhere a few years ago, makes a whole range of HK items including HK93 mags. So with mag availability out of the way….maybe it was time to get back into the HK93 game…just for the nostalgia of my misspent youth.
Eforms are faster these days and the SBR on this jewel came back pretty quick. A quick trip to the engraver and it was done.
Its not 100% faithful to the HK93. For one thing, there is a paddle mag release which the original HK93 rifle that was sold in the US never had. And the lower is ‘push pin’ rather than ‘shelf’, which is true to original full-auto HK rifles but definitely not something you see on semi-auto versions. Thread pitch on the muzzle is also different than the metric used by HK. But other than that, its pretty much a clone.
Its purpose? Well, same as any other SBR’d .223…..fun gun and a one-in-a-hundred time when an SBR is exactly what you need over a carbine full size rifle. It is, in fact, virtually identical in size to my MP5 clones. In fact, quite a few MP accessories will work on this thing..most notably the forends.
Honestly, for me, this is mostly just a ‘fun gun’. Even if it were an original 93 it wouldnt be my first choice for fighting the invading zombies…its a logistical outlier. It may be better, in my opinion, than an AR15 in some uses but at the end of the day I can find mags and parts for an AR quite easily whereas it would be a long and often fruitless search to find parts and mags for the HK if I had to.
By the by, this ‘pistol’ is marketed as the MKE AP53 (imported, but not made, by Century). It scratches an Itch I’ve had since I was 19-years-old and so far its been fun to shoot. I’ll be replacing the tuning fork muzzle device ASAP, though. Accuracy? Once dialed in, I could hit the steel at 100 yards which is about as far as I’d really expect an 8.3″ barrelled .5.56 to be used. (To be used at? To be used for?….English, man.)
I would be remiss to fail to mention that PTR makes a version of this (the so-called HK51) in .308. Thats right, a .308 in an 8.3″ barrel. Sometimes referred to as ‘the semi-auto flash bang dispenser’. Not for me.
I do believe I’ve now hit the roller-locked trifecta – 7.62×51, 5.56, and 9mm…call it ‘the HK Hat Trick’.
The KEArms gun was also quite nice, but it was giving me fits. I could never get off more than five or six rounds before I’d have a wild failure to eject. Since the 9mm cases are so short, and there’s plenty of room for bolt travel in the gun, a case would fail to eject, the bolt would cycle all the way back, and upon return the bolt would slide forward with the unejected case held firmly to it, and the empty case would actually push the next round out of the mag and into the chamber….creating a hellish doublefeed.
I tried swapping springs, changing ammo, etc, etc. Nothing worked. Since I had a lot of guns here to play with I kinda set the KEA gun back and forgot about it. Last month I finally contacted KEA and explained the problem. They emailed me a paid shipping label and sent it back. Took ’em about two weeks to get to it. There was some problem with the bolt and they replaced it. Got the gun back yesterday and headed to the range. Shoots fine.
One thing about those KEA poly lowers is their claim to fame is that they are lightweight. The 9mm is no powerhouse of recoil, but in a lightweight gun like the one I have it was interesting that the recoil almost seemed the same as what you’d get from a .223. I’ll throw a tri-lug on the end of the barrel and see if a suppressor makes any difference.
Once you’ve played with roller-delayed 9mm guns, you become a little spoiled and a straight blowback 9mm seems ker-chunky and brutal.
Invariably, any time someone brings up the topic of pistol-caliber carbines there will be someone who chimes in with “Ive never seen the point of carrying a full size carbine in a less than full-size caliber” or “You might as well just have it in .223 for the same size and weight”. Arguments that completely ignore everything except caliber. Would I rather run out the door with a 5.56 carbine than a 9mm one? Absolutely. So why would I have a 9mm carbine? Very streamlined logistics for situations where you don’t have the luxury of carrying two different types of magazines and two different types of ammo. If all you can take with you is what you can carry, there’s an advantage to streamlined logistics. Additionally, I can suppress a 9mm carbine a lot easier than a 5.56.
To carry the pointlessness of this argument even further, someone will say either:
a) If portability is a factor then you should just grab a 10/22 and a .22 pistol
or
b) Get a 5.56 ‘pistol’ AR
Firstly, Im not going though the apocalypse with just .22 . As it is, I’m already compromising on terminal ballistics by dropping to 9mm. Secondly, no AR ‘pistol’ is really a pistol. A pistol fits in a holster on your belt or tucks under your shirt for compact and concealable purposes. “Get 5.7 then”, will be the retort. Sure…I’ll get right on that when I can find 5.7 just as easily as I can 9mm.
First choice for Der Tag? Nah. But if I had to run outta here with just a backpack and what could fit in it, I’d probably grab the 9mm Glock, 9mm carbine, 9mm suppressor, a dozen Glock mags, as much 9mm as I have room for, and call it a day.
“Package guns” are those find-them-in-WalMart type of deals where you get a rifle, an attached scope, and maybe a carry case for a set amount of money. The scope is invariably some variable of the 3-9x variety and the gun is usually a no-frills model. Theyre a nice package for someone getting their feet wet in hunting or for someone on a tight budget. But… is it any good?
The guys at 9-Hole Reviews usually work with military-use guns. In this video, they jokingly and tongue-in-cheek refer to this type of guns use in the ‘documentary’ movie ‘Red Dawn’. You don’t go to war with the guns you want, you go to war with the guns you have. How would a package gun like this acquit itself as an impromptu mid-range rifle? It acquits itself fairly well.
A standard trope of almost every ‘invasion’ book and movie is some non-military dude running around with his hunting rifle nailing invading soldiers from distance. Is it an accurate trope? Well, it’s certainly happened. Is it likely that one woodtick with a hunting rifle is going to materially stop an advance of enemy troops? Beats me. Certainly things come to a temporary halt when someone starts dropping bullets into a dismounted group of soldiers, but it doesn’t seem to stop the advance…it just delays it momentarily. But, hey, Im no expert.
The evidence, at least from this video, seems to support that a good shooter with a Tractor Supply Christmas Sale rifle can pose a reasonable threat at distance. And..doesnt everyone have a gun like this somewhere?
Went out to the range the other day to see if a problem I was having with my BRN-180 SBR was resolved or not. I swapped out the extractor and ejector with ones from JP Customs and that seems to have fixed it. I say ‘seems’ because I won’t be completely satisfied until I run a couple hundred more rounds through it. There’s simply no room for doubt and lack of faith in a firearm that you may (or may not) want to keep in a ‘serious’ role.
Speaking of serious, the internet gives me no shortage of pistol drills to use to keep skills sharp and active. However, I don’t see as many carbine drills. So, I am throwing this question out to the collective hive-mind: do you have a source for drills I can perform at the range using an AR equipped with a .22 conversion kit? Most of my rifle drills involve ‘snap shooting’ but I’d like something a bit more, for lack of a better term, ‘practical’ or ‘real world’. There are plenty of drills that require use of full blown .223 ammo, and while some of those may be of use when using a .22 conversion, many are not. Because .22 is less powerful than .223, I’m looking for more ‘close in’ drills. Anyone have any suggestions? Bonus points if its a drill that can involve rifle/pistol transitions that enable me to use my .22 Glock.
By the by, the conversion kit I use is the CMMG .22 conversion kit and I cannot say enough good things about it. Just clean and lube it thoroughly when youre done and it’s good to go. Same for the .22 Glock.
I remember when I was a lot younger and a lot poorer I would take what I could get, gun-wise. I owned one AR-15 and I was happy to have it. Nowadays, its a different story and I can have some ‘first world problems’, and , if I so desire, fix them.
Black is a color you don’t really see in nature much except at night. An ‘evil black rifle’ stands out a bit in most environments. Your eye naturally discerns something that is ‘out of the ordinary’ and a perfectly straight three-foot-long black stick is one of those things.
This sort of ‘problem’ is easily remedied with some spraypaint and stencils if youre of the the mind to go that route. I prefer to just skip the issue altogether and, when possible, get a gun in my color of choice – OD green (ODG).
This brings me to the Ruger RXM pistol I bought a while back. Now, I own Glocks and Sig P320’s and the Ruger combined the best of both worlds (without the ‘uncommanded discharges’). You get, essentially, a 3rd Gen Glock 9mm but you get a chasis system like the P320 allowing you some interesting parts swaps. Such as … colored frames. (Frames of color?)
The RXM came with a bluish/gray frame. Fine, it works, whatever. But, for $27 MagPul is offering a replacement frame in ODG. Sign me up.
It’s a fairly petty thing, to be concerned about your guns color. However…why not?
Picked up an Eotech XPS2 to throw on my ‘green machine’ AR. Unlike the one that is sitting on my FN, this one is by itself with no magnifier. Just a simple, unmagnified red dot. To my surprise it shot quite well at 100 yards, keeping three shot groups within a couple inches. Considering this is 1x and there is no magnification, thats not too shabby. I expected good accuracy from the SIG upper, but I didnt expect my eyes to be able to keep a red dot, in bright daylight, on a light background at 100 yards. But..here we are.
Thats a SIG upper on a KE Arms poly lower with their target trigger, 45* safety, and ambi mag release. It’s pretty light for what it is, and as age comes on apace I find that lighter guns have an appeal (says the man who owns a Barret 82A1).
One thing that is wildly pissing me off is that the front rail has no picatinny on it. So, I had to add a segment of pic rail to the front top to accommodate a set of backup sights…but that raise the sight to the point it shoots a bit low, even with the front sight post bottomed out. The solution is going to be to find a thinner pic riser.
I mounted the Eotech on the gun and fired it at 100 yards. Windage was spot on and only elevation needed adjusting. I’m coming around to enjoy the speed and utility of these red dots. Ive learned the hard way that if youre going to need a gun, you need it in a hurry and anything that speeds up getting the bullet into the backstop is a good thing. So, I’ll let my wallet be my endorsement…I liked the first XPS2 I bought so much that I bought another.
While at the range, I also pulled out the SBR’d BRN-180. I recently purchased a Meprolight M21 as an experiment with non-illuminated scopes. The M21 uses just ambient light, like an ACOG, but unlike the ACOG has no other light source (unlike the ACOG’s tritium backup). So…a batteryless optic for the end of the world. Howd I like it. Its…ok. Build quality seems good and I expect it to be brutally rugged. But it suffers the same problem all fiber optic sights have – shooting from light into light, and light into dark is no problem. But, if youre in a darkened area shooting into a lighter area, the reticle may not be bright enough. Meprolight does make a version of this optic that has tritium, which Ill probably try, and another version that uses batteries. Considering this is an Israeil offering, and it tends to be sunny all the time over there, I suppose its not an issue over there. Here, however, its another story. Then again, this stubby little wanna-be-PDW is mostly an indoor/car item, so perhaps its not as much of an issue as I think. And, of course, backup sights which cowitnessed beautifully.
Unfortunately, this little gun is giving me some ejection problems. Every so often a case extracts, but fails to ehect, giving me a stovepipe and double feed. Rather than go overboard screwing with it, I’m just going to swap out the ejector, ejector spring, extractor, and extractor spring for some enhanced one from JP Customs. I really want to like this little gun, and I want to have faith in it’s reliability, so a little work is called for.
Interestingly, in the same size I can get the JAKL pistol/SBR whcih gives me the same size package but has proven itself well so far.
So, overall, a productive day at the range. Beats sitting at home doing weekend laundry duties.
One of the things I like about the current crop of Palmetto JAKL and Brownell BRN-180 guns is that they use a 99% bog-standard AR lower. (The JAKL requires you to swap to a slightly modified bolt release paddle.)
Anyway… since both of these platforms use unmodified AR lowers, it’s convenient to keep an eye open for SBR’d lowers that come up for sale. Then I can just pull the upper off of the ‘pistol’ it sits on and mate it up to the SBR’d lower giving me the ability use a real stock and not have to look over my shoulder at the range.
While I do have a couple SBR’d AR’s, one of the drawbacks to the AR design is the buffer tube that does not lend itself to a folding stock. Do you really need a folding stock? Depends on who you ask. Personally, when I buy a firearm it almost always is with an eye towards how it would be used ‘in a prolonged crisis of some kind’ (cough*EOTWAWKI*cough). If, Crom forbid, I have to throw my gear in the back of the truck and head off to the beta site, space will be at a premium and being able to tuck a .223 carbine in my backpack will have some value.
Lately I’ve been playing with the Gen2 Brownell BRN-180. It’s modernized version of the AR-180 and has all the same benefits and drawbacks of the original AR-180’s from way back when. What the AR-180 brings to the table (and so does the JAKL) is a more ‘hygienic’ operating system. The JAKL and BRN-180 both use designs that keep operating gases out of the action. The JAKL through the use of a long-stroke gas piston, and the BRN-180 with a short-stroke gas piston system. Or, put another way, the AK system and the M1 Carbine system. The direct impingement system of the AR15 is great, and makes for an accurate semi-auto rifle but there is, in my opinion and experience, a bit of a reliability issue in the AR system because of the operating gases being vented into the action and bolt. Some people shoot a thousand rounds from the AR with no cleaning and no issue, some fire 200 rounds and have things get gummy. Your mileage may vary. But with the non-direct impingement guns it isnt even on the map as a potential problem. Sure, keep on top of cleaning, squirt some lube into bolt from time to time, and you can probably go forever without cleaning. But, some day you may not have the time, resources, or ability to clean your rifle after a couple hundred rounds and thats when things like ‘ability to endure neglect’ become important.
Again, your milage may vary…I’m only speaking about my experiences.
Since I was wanting a carbine that could be made into the smallest footprint possible without compromising too much performance, I needed something that didnt require the buffer tube. Thats pretty much every non-AR out there – JAKL, AK, AR-180, HK93, Mini14, etc. So, I ordered up an 11″ BRN-180 upper , picked up a stripped Poverty Pony lower that had been SBR’d by the folks at Iron Mountain, slapped a CMMG parts kit in it, added a Midwest Industries folder, put on some Magpul BUIS and a sling, and got this:
Pretty fetching, dontcha think?
Took it out to the range and it ran just fine. Threaded a Gemtech Abyss onto the end and it shot well enough but I had a few failures. Didnt realize that I had forgotten to change the setting on the gas block to ‘S’ (suppressed) from ‘U’ (unsuppressed). That cleared it up. With the can on the end the thing is just at the same OAL as a unsuppressed AR carbine. I also have a 16″ BRN-180 as well with a Leupold 1-4x Patrol scope on it and it’s a light, handy gun.
Theres the saying that when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Is a compact folding-folding-stock SBR my first choice for running out the door? Not if I can get away with a 16″ barrel AR, AK, or similar arm. But for the circumstance where high portability and compactness matter? This might not be a terrible choice.
