Aesop over at Raconteurs Report throws out a Chuck Norris-like joke about yesterdays event…

A sniper shoots at Trumps head, and its the snipers head that explodes.

Thats actually a pretty good one.

I put yesterday’s events behind me because a) the next President is still alive (see what I did there?) and b) I’m the pebble in this avalanche…nothing for me to see or do.

So…off to the range.

The Mini-14 has always had a reputation for AK-like accuracy. That is to say, there’s a reason the A-Team never hit anything. The Mini-14 was notoriously inaccurate and that was that…go buy an AR.

Ruger did a bit of product improving to the Mini-14 a while back and the reports are that they are now much more accurate than they used to be. I took this re-issue of the GB model to the range today to sight it in and see what sorta accuracy could be wrung out of it. TL;DR – much better accuracy than the old models.

I’m getting to be an old man, and open rifle sights aren’t as ideal for me to use as they used to be. Nonetheless, at 50 yards I could keep everything in a group about the size of a playing card. At 100 yards it was easy enough to ring the steel plates. I think with nicer sights the gun would benefit greatly. And, yes, I’m aware of the aftermarket options. In reality, I’ll probably throw a little red dot on this thing and go with that.

Considering I have something like three dozen AR’s tucked away around here it’s a curiosity to have anything in .223 that isn’t an AR. But you know what? Everyone has an AR, and they’re all over the place…..sometimes I like to try other stuff. So…the Mini-14, the JAKL, the BRN-180, and at some point probably an AUG and whatever .223 PTR is gonna come out with. And I’ve been toying with the idea of a 5.56 AK as well, although that itch is scratched by the JAKL.

The Mini-14 is about as rugged as any other Ruger gun, which is pretty impressive….good thing because Ruger, unless things have changed recently, has been notorious for not sending parts out to customers who wanted them. If a part needed replacing you had to send your gun to them, they weren’t just gonna drop a new bolt or trigger in the mail to you.

With the demise of Tapco (which, in itself, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing) the one trustworthy aftermarket magazine (Intrafuse Gen II Mini-14 mag) on the market is now unavailable. And, honestly, I’ve had some negative experiences with recent factory Ruger 30-rd mags although the 20’s seem to work just fine.

By the by, I have the Mini-14 and the other non-AR’s because I have enough AR’s for my preparedness needs and thus I can move on to having some ‘fun’ guns. But, for a .223 carbine for the sake of preparedness? You’d be a fool to go with anything other than an AR. Price, logistics, adaptability….can’t beat the AR.

So after finally getting a red dot sight (RDS) on one of my Glocks, it seemed like an interesting thing to compare it against a regular iron sighted Glock in a series of timed drills using my Mantis dry fire kit.

Before we get into it, let me tell you…guys, you really should have one of these kits. I have it set up in my living room and I can practice my draw-from-concealment-and-fire-one-shot drills. But more importantly, I don’t have to think I’m improving and by how much…there’s metrics – exact numbers – to tell me how if I’m improving. And I can do this in my living room when its -15 degrees outside or 105 degrees outside and I don’t wanna head to the range. This thing is awesome for honing skills and evaluating performance. I wish I’d gotten it years ago. I promise, youre not gonna regret it.

Anyway…..

Doing the ‘draw and shoot’ drills, my time with the RDS was usually a good .35-.50 second faster than with open sights. Accuracy was a little better also.

What I learned rather quickly was that you don’t bring the gun up and look for the dot, rather you bring the gun up and line up the sights and that lets you have the dot right where it needs to be. Still taking some getting used to, but there are measurable positive results.

This time, though, not another 9mm.

Something a little different from the run-of-the-mill cataloged pistol…if you know what to look for.

ETA: Its a Ruger #1740…stainless GP-100 .357 Mag with full underlug five-inch barrel. I am a firm believer that a 5″ barrel revolver is the ideal length. Not too long and front heavy like a 6″, and not so rear-heavy and stubby as a 4″. As a general-purpose do-it-all length, I find the 5″ to be ideal. Finding holsters however…….

I had decided I was gonna go ahead and tweak out one of my Glocks, and I pretyy much did everything I wanted to it. However, the last item..the final piece…came together today. I didn’t want a ‘match’ trigger for a pistol that is ostensibly for a more informal use. The new Glock Performance Trigger seemed to be getting good reviews, and the fact that it’s made by the people who made the gun itself carries a bit of weight.

So, the trigger arrived today. Took about ten minutes for me to put it in because it has been a while since I did enough of a detail strip on a Glock to have to drive a couple pins. But, its pretty simple…punch out the pins, remove the locking block, remove the slide release, remove the trigger, replace trigger, reassemble. Is the trigger better? Quite. The trigger pull doesn’t feel different, but the way it breaks and moves is much improved. It has far less stacking and creep. It’s rather like a two-stage military trigger…takeup and then break, with greatly reduced travel. I rather like it. Is it worth a hundred bucks? I don’t know… I mean, how good a trigger do you need for minute-of-bad-guy at seven yards? But then again, on the two-way shooting range I’ll take whatever unfair advantage I can  give myself.

Just dry firing right now, but I’ll take it out this weekend and put it through its paces. So far, though….thumbs up.

ETA: Just occurred to me that this pistol is just a muzzle comp away from being a Roland Special variant.

So that happened….

The 77/357 handles and feels like a .22 rifle. It is very light and just feels good. Accuracy with open sights at 50 yards was excellent. It fed everything I put into int including .38 WC and sharp-shouldered Keith bullets in .357. Since it shoots a small pistol cartridge like the .38/357 it should prove to be a pretty economical gun to shoot. And, of course, I plan on spending some time with the heavy bullets at subsonic speeds to see how well this thing will work with a suppressor.
This particular gun is a somewhat limited offering from Ruger and it was difficult to find. The .44 versions were abundant but I scoured all the usual sources and this was literally the only one I could find.
But I really enjoyed ringing the steel with it at 50 yards with the open sights and can see it’s probably going to become a favorite rifle.