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.
It’s not that I’m a person prone to being suspicious, but rather that I “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.” The article here makes the case that the Glock pistol is inherently flawed in that it is easy to convert it to full-happy by the addition of a simple ‘drop-in’ part. The recourse, the article goes on to say, is to force Glock to re-design it’s product to prevent the easy installation of such devices.
Ok, lets look at that more closely. First step, whip the public into a frenzy over the perceived issue and put out a proposal to solve it. In this case the issue is illegal full auto Glocks and the solution is to force a redesign. Second step, ?????. Third step, neutered 10-shot Glocks.
What I mean by all that is that let’s say that, by some bizarre political or legal machination, they actually force Glock to make a change to all subsequent products to prevent the ‘easy’ conversion to full auto. What happens to the millions of Glocks out there that pre-date that design change? Hmmm. Well, a full-auto gun is fairly useless if it can only hold ten rounds, so a magazine ban seems a ‘reasonable, commonsense’ way to ‘de-fang’ the older ‘readily convertible’ Glocks. Or they get redefined as ‘machine guns’ because of their ‘readily convertible’ nature. Or there’s a national recall to existing guns to have them altered to the new design. Or..or…or.
Point is, if they whip up enough hysteria, which this article seems designed to do, it’ll create the casus belli needed to ‘do something’ about that ‘Glock problem’. You have to demonize something (or someone) in the eyes of the public so that when you do come down hard on it, everyone nods their head and says ‘Well, yes, of course.’ We saw this with the Assault Weapons Ban. Folks were buying AR’s and AK’s for years before the media suddenly made the ‘evil black rifle’ into the new cause celebre for the gun prohibition movement.
But, maybe I’m just seeing boogeymen where none exist. It’s possible…Im often wrong about these things.
A while back I posted that ATFE had made it so that a person could, if so inclined, do some paperwork online rather than through the mail. I hate the ATFE with a passion and I see no reason to change that. But, I hate the idea of being in jail even more. So, I filled out the forms, paid the $200 tax each, and waited. I just got the approvals on both in email today:
Yep…..I took this guy:
And did the paperwork (and engraving) to add a Choate side-folder (sent to me by the fine like-minded guys at Choate). The results? Here you go:
The one on the left is surprisingly handy…I mean it is really handy. It’s a comfortable length, carries well, has enough barrel length to give the 9mm a little added oomph, and is just a remarkably handy size, weight, and length for any situation I can envision needing it. It just feels…perfect. The one on the right? Less utility but oodles of ‘cool factor’.
A very valid question to ask would be why not just go with the now-legal-again ‘wrist brace’ and save myself $200 and some headache? Well, a couple reasons…first, I’m already on ‘the list’ so..in for a penny, in for a pound. Second, the SBR status lets me throw a VFG on the front of the thing. And finally, I just figured that in this case I may as well skip the half-measures and just go full retard on this.
How long did the paperwork take? Let me check….49 days. I get Form 3’s back in less than a week but the Form 1’s take seven weeks, it seems. Unfortunately this isnt the end of my having to deal with the goons at ATFE. I still need to give my Uzis the same treatment. But, for now, I’m gonna enjoy taking these to the range and getting the envious looks.
Remember that a while back I decided I was going to tweak out one of my Glocks? Swapped out for a threaded barrel, sent it offer some cerocoating and an RMR cut? Any of that ringing a bell?
Well today I finally got the RCR optic. So…we go from this:
To this:
Still remaining, I need to put a nice not-too-light-not-too-creepy trigger in it. (Any suggestions, Tam?) And then…just shoot it until I’m happy with my proficiency. And my Safariland holster fits it, with optic and light, just perfectly….
By the by, if anyone is as big a gear queer as me and is curious, its a Viking Tactics Skirmish Belt with Cobra Belt. IFAK/TQ pouch is by Warrior Poet Supply. And the dual mag pouches are High Speed Gear Double Decker Tacos. Thats it…I didn’t want to clutter things up. This isn’t an end-of-the-world type of setup. I just wanted something for investigating the odd bump in the night or “‘who’s truck is that in the driveway?’ at 130am” sort of rig. Pistol, FAK, and 2 spare AR/Glock mags. Just need to add a flashlight pouch and I’d call it good.
I have almost no experience shooting red dots on pistol, so there’s going to be a bit of a learning curve but I’m optimistic that the benefits will be worth it. Specifically, shooting faster and with better accuracy at those speeds.
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.
Bad Person gets caught shoplifting. They pay the fine and move on. They then go back to the same store, not having learned their lesson, and engage in the same behaviour, get caught, and get punished. Now taking it personally, they go back to the store at 2am and burn it to the ground for having the audicity to challenge Bad Person’s activities.
I suspect this is going to be ATFE’s reaction to their most recent oopsie. Specifically, after the SCOTUS smackdown on bump stocks, another court has vacated the wrist brace issue.
ATFE is a group of vengeful law-enforcement pariahs who are very focused on their image. To get taken to the woodshed twice in a few weeks is going to do nothing except encourage them to re-assert their dominance. Whats that gonna look like? Beats me…a magazine ban? Increased wait times? A very legalistic and detailed look at exactly what they do have the authority to do and then them doing that dialed up to 11? FFL dealer audits with the intensity of a colonoscopy for everyone? Beats me. But I know that often times when you make a bully look bad, he gets mad-bull enraged and doesn’t care what its going to cost for him to avenge his hurt ego.
And yet, even though I know ATFE will come up with some sort of revenge plan, much like Nazis executing 100 civilians for each Nazi killed by a partisan, I still smile warmly to myself at the notion of ATFE getting their hand slapped. I just hope Im not one of those 100 civilians marched out into the woods.
Personally, I have no use for a bump stock. I imagine that if the time comes I ever need a machine gun, there will be plenty of them laying around. However, I am always a fan of ATFE getting cleat marks in their wedding tackle.
ATFE has been overstepping their bounds and creating ‘laws’ out of whole cloth when, in actuality, they can only enforce…not create…regulations.
I will say that while I have no interest in the bump stock for my own use, I think this decision will be an important one in regards to the ‘wrist brace’ issue. We shall see. I do have an interest in the ‘wrist brace’ issue since I’d rather avoid the whole NFA $200 registration nonsense if I can.
Just busy this week, thats all. I’m in the midst of an enormous auction of gun stuff that quite possibly might be putting me into stripped AR lowers cheap enough that I might pass them out as Paratus gifts this year. More details on the auction in a few days.
In the meantime, we are forecasting a bit of heat this weekend, so perhaps after what seems like weeks of rain we will finally have a weekend conducive to yardwork.
I really don’t want to get too far in the weeds with this, but, as I see it, it could be reasonably argued that there is a utility in having an accurate suppressed carbine of some kind for low-signature shooting at ranges not much past 100 yards. And while a suppressed .22 in a quality bolt gun with a good suppressor on the end is a fine, fine instrument…sometimes you need a bit more bullet mass.
So, how would you do that, exactly? A suppressed bolt action rifle would be pretty much ideal…no noise of the action cycling, no special mods to the rifle to allow cycling with subsonic ammo, etc. (A single shot carbine would give the same benefit but follow up shots would be rather slow…on the other hand, this sort of arm is seldom called on for volume-of-fire applications.)
So…a suppressed bolt action out to about 100 yards. One hundred yards isnt a very challenging distance with a scoped carbine, so almost any caliber will do if it can be kept subsonic with relative ease. The first thing that springs to mind is a 9mm or .45 ACP gun. Pistol ammo is easy to load down to subsonic, and .45 AARP is natively subsonic. Problem is, when was the last time you saw a bolt action 9mm of any worth? (Sure, 9mm Destroyer carbines are out there…but those are novelty Spanish guns. Repros of the DeLisle are out there, but I wouldnt call them precision.) My first thought, and still on my radar, is a Ruger 77/357….a bolt-action .357 Mag that would let me use my 9mm suppressors. Loaded with 200 gr. bullets it should be just fine for the relatively short range while providing a good platform with potential for accuracy….bolt action, integral scope mounts, aftermarket trigger availability, etc. Problem is finding one.
So, I did a bit of research and decided that while I am still going to keep an eye open for the threaded 77/357, I was going to pick up a bolt gun in .300 Blackout. This would let me use my .30 suppressor and the exterior ballistics would be an improvement over a pistol bullet. As a bonus, the Ruger version uses AR15 mags for most applications. (Depending on how you load the cartridge, an average Pmag will work fine, but if youre going to seat bullets out a bit further you might want a dedicated purpose-built .300 Blackout AR mag.)
And thus we got this:
Its a Ruger American® Rifle Generation II Ranch in .300 Blackout. I then changed out the stock for a Magpul stock. I threw the Sig SRD762-QD suppressor on there and fired a few rounds just to see how quiet it is. Gotta say, it isn’t “Hollywood quiet” but it isn’t too far away from it. I need to throw a scope on and I’m thinking that since it’s for fairly short ranges, either a variable 1-6x or a fixed 6x would be the way to go. Why the Magpul stock? A couple reasons..first, and I’m not ashamed to say it, it looks cooler. I like the sling attachment options, the subdued color, MLOK points to attach accessories, adjustable cheekpiece and spacers, and the AK-style mag release.
The only drawback to all this, naturally, is that I now have to work the logistics of a new cartridge. I’m not happy about that, and thats one of the reasons I’m still holding out for the Ruger 77/357. But I must say that the .300 Blackout was certainly ear-safe and deceptively quiet at the outdoor range. I need to go with a friend and have them shoot it as I pace off some distances away from them to see at what distance it becomes virtually inaudible.
A good question might be why not use subsonic .308 ammo? Well, I gave that a lot of thought. There’s a lot of merit to using .308 from a logistics point of view, but my experience with large (comparatively) cases with light loads has been that you get erratic performance. Enough inconsistent performance to make a difference at 100 yards? Maybe. But there was also the concern of mixing up subsonic .308 with regular .308. I don’t mind mixing up subsonic 9mm with regular 9mm (or .45) because my pistols will digest either one just fine. But my PTR-91’s may have other ideas about subsonic ammo. I may revisit this and try some subsonic .308 but it seemed that if there were going to be tradeoffs that had to be made, then I might as well do the ones that get me something more in line with what I think my needs were.
So…theres the weekend.
