Tag Archives: gun

Dumbest AR ever

Posted on by

I came across the worst AR in the world today and…almost bought it.

I’ll skip the backstory…lets jump to the point where the guy says “I have an AR I wanna sell”. And what an AR it was… Steiner DBAL up front, a Hera CQR stock, BAD Lever, QD sling, etc, etc. Very cool looking gun.

And, like the super hot looking chick who turns out to be a dud in the sack, that’s all this gun was…all sizzle, no steak.

First off, the Hera stock? Looks cool as hell. And..thats about it. My biggest gripe was that the detent and spring for the selector switch is held in the AR receiver, normally, by the pistol grip. On the Hera, you take the spring, tuck it into a little rubber sleeve, and stuff that sleeve into an open slot on the side of the gun. Seriously. Its held in place by friction. WTF?

Next up, that Steiner DBAL? Well, I had to look closer…it was some knockoff that had absolutely no IR value whatsoever. Just a flashlight and a green laser in a butch looking housing to make you look like a operationally operating operator.

Next up? Side charging AR upper. No lie. While you might think thats pretty cool, here’s why it isnt – the AR is a pretty well sealed receiver. Put a magazine in, close the dust cover, and crap pretty much has only one or two small ingress points. On a side charger, though, theres no dust cover and you have to have a long slot cut in the side of the receiver and thats gonna allow ingress of dirt and other stoppage fodder.

And the real death stroke to this whole deal…which I should have noticed Immediately…was that there was no serial number on the receiver. Or any other marking than SAFE and FIRE. Curious, I opend the receiver and beheld lots of chattered aluminum that had been milled away with an angry beaver. Yes, it was the dreaded 80% lower. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that except…while the feds are cool with you building your own gun, they are very uncool with you selling your own gun. You gotta stamp some names and numbers on that thing if youre gonna sell it.

Now, I have a bucket of Anderson $39 stripped lowers here so it might have been worth it to buy the thing, throw away the lower, and put on a Poverty Pony lower with a serial number and all the other fedgoon-required goodness…but I am not buying a kitchen table AR. With a gimmick stock. And an airsoft-grade laser/light.

But…from a distance and without looking closely, it looked sooooo sweet.

Moral of the story: much like hot chicks that are lacking in the boudoir, don’t fall in love with appearances. Check out that gun closely. Especially check to make sure its got a serial number.

The guy that has that thing is kinda stuck with it unless he gets a serial number stamped on it, or he finds someone who doesnt care about it’s status. Caveat emptor, kids.

Keeping eyes and ears open

Posted on by

Hmmm….

President Joe Biden will unveil a package of executive actions to curb gun violence on Thursday — a step that is likely to be cheered by increasingly impatient advocates despite being relatively modest in scope.
…..
Among the actions Biden will take will be to direct the Department of Justice to begin, within 30 days, the process of requiring buyers of so-called ghost guns — homemade or makeshift firearms that lack serial numbers — to undergo background checks and, within 60 days, regulating concealed assault-style firearms, according to the White House.

And from WSJ:

The Justice Department has 60 days to propose a new rule that would restrict arm braces that are often used with AR-15-style pistols, which are smaller versions of AR-15-style rifles. The braces are designed to stabilize the pistols, but can also be used like shoulder stocks, effectively transforming them into short-barreled rifles, which are heavily restricted under federal law, according to gun-control advocates.

And just like that….I spent a lot of money…again.

G3 upgrade

Posted on by

I have a handful of G3-style rifles. I got them because I wanted a proven .308 platform and because, at the time, magazines were less than $1.00 each. However, the G3 platform is a mixed bag. It has two tremendous advantages in its favor: brute ruggedness and no gas system to screw with. After that it has a couple disadvantages…one of the biggest is that the design of the gun makes mounting an optic very difficult. The problem isn’t as easy as simply slapping some pic rail on top of the receiver. No, see the problem is that the stock that is used has a length of pull that is a bit longer than it needs to be, and there’s a bit of a dogleg drop to the stock to bring your eyes into line with the iron sights atop the rifle. If you mount an optic, you have to literally give up your cheek weld to get your face high enough to see through the scope.

Gun Jesus, a long time hater of the G3 platform, made a video about a ‘modernization’ project he did to a G3-clone. Among other things, he made it left-handed-friendly, added an extended safety, changed the cocking handle out, got a trigger job, and most importantly swapped the stock for one made by the Swede firm of Spuhr.


I’d been wanting to add an optic to my pet PTR-GI rifle but did not want to have to go through the awkwardness of a bizarre cheek riser kludge. Gun Jesus’ experiments, and successful experiences, with modifying his gun prompted me to go ahead and drop a rather healthy chunk of change on what is essentially an M4 stock for the G3.

I ordered the stock from Mile High Shooting and, yes, it really did cost that much. Got the stock in about a week. It would have been nice to have an instructional video on the stock changeout, but the one-page printed instructions were adequate. There is virtually no way you are going to use iron sights on the rifle with this thing in place…you simply cannot get your face low enough to get a sight picture. But….your face sits perfectly where it needs to be to look through a LPVO or dot optic. Since I had a couple extra Leupold Patrol scopes and mounts sitting here, thats what I went with.

Loaded up some 150 gr. softpoints and went to the range. Recoil mitigation? Oh yes….the recoil is nowhere near what it normally is with the issue stock. The stock puts my face in the perfect position to acquire the scope quickly. First round off the magazine tended to print about an inch away from the others, but if you discount that it was turning in 1.5″ groups at 100 yards. Getting a trigger job probably would make a big difference. However, for going out and dropping the hammer on Bambi this thing should be just fine.

If you have a G3 pattern rifle, and you want to make it a bit more native to optics, this stock (if you can stomach the expense) is everything youre looking for. And since TPIWWP, here you go:

By the by, if I had to do it all over again I probably would just go with an AR-10 for the superior ergonomics. Magazines would have been several orders of magnitude more expensive, but I think that might have been a worthwhile tradeoff. One of the reasons I didn’t go with the AR-10 originally is because, at that time, there was no ‘standardized’ magazine…some outfits used modified FAL mags, some used modified M14 mags, some used proprietary mags, etc, etc. Nowadays it looks like thats all shaken out.

Choosey? Uzi.

Posted on by

,Rawles had an article on his website about the Uzi the other day. As you know, years ago I picked up an Uzi after carefully trying come up with a non-SBR solution to a rugged,proven, 9mm carbine that would take down into a package small enough to fit in your average ‘three day pack’. At the time, there were not a lot of choices…while there were guns on the market that fit most of the criteria, virtually all of them were new designs that did not have a proven and established track record in terms of performance and durability. When I lucked out and fell into an Uzi, it pretty much hit all the high points in terms of what I was looking for.

You have to keep in mind that, nowadays, a ‘wrist brace’ lets you create short-barrelled ‘not a carbine’ guns quite easily, but at the time I acquired the Uzi that was not an option. So, since we are in a new era of designs and rule-bender/beater gimmicks like the wrist brace, would I still go with the Uzi.

Honestly, probably not…for that purpose.

THe Uzi is a fine gun, no two ways about it. But like the M1 Garand, or the 1911, it was a fine gun for it’s time. And times change. The Uzi has a few things going against it as a semi-auto carbine…scant availability of accessories, not ambidextrous, very heavy, virtually no optics mounting options, etc, etc. Compare and contrast the Uzi against something more contemporary like, say, a CZ Evo or Sig MPX, and you can see that the design is pretty dated and doesn’t offer the features we’ve gotten used to in more recent designs.

What the Uzi does have, in spades, is a proven history. It’s been around long enough to have figured out what works and what doesnt work. Other guns like the MPX, Evo, etc, are too new to have decades of experience behind them.

The reason I wanted a takedown carbine was to have something compact enough to be extremely portable, but carry a goodly amount of firepower. If the world came crashing down and I had a need to have a high-capacity ‘long gun’, the Uzi would be the one tucked in the bag under my desk.

Nowadays though…I’d trade it out for the Ruger PC9 in an aftermarket sidefolding chasis, or a ‘wrist braced’ 9″ AR style gun. Why? It comes down to one big factor – logistics. A half dozen Glock magazines, 17- or 33-rd, can be interchanged between pistol and carbine, streamlining logistics considerably.

Some people will, of course, say that the issue of magazine interchangeability is overblown and that the tradeoff of stepping down to a pistol caliber, versus a rifle caliber, for the sake of magazine interchangeability is a bad tradeoff. Well, as it turns out, if I wrist braced a 9″ .223 AR pistol the reduction in ballistics performance drops me down to almost identical energy of a 9mm +p. In other words, the .223 out of a ‘wrist braced’ AR pistol fairly equals a 9mm out of a 16″ carbine. There’s more to it, of course… the .223, even at the lower velocity, will shoot flatter and probably penetrate a bit better but with the similar ballistics I’d rather have the option of not having to keep two different kinds of magazines in my bag and on my belt.

I’m not foolish enough to say that money isn’t a consideration when choosing gear that may someday be called upon to keep you hale and hearty, but it shouldn’t be an overriding consideration. AN original IMI Uzi, in semi-auto, is going to set you back somewhere in the $1200-2000 range depending on a few factors like caliber, condition, and accessories. For that money you could buy two or three CZ or Ruger guns, or one gun and a metric crapload of magazines and accessories. The acquisition of my Uzi was serendipitous so I got an exceptionally good deal on mine. Your mileage will vary.

Options? The CZ Evo is sweet and I do have one with a buncha mags. It does everything my Uzi does at half the weight and price. The Ruger, once I get it geared out, will probably cost as much as the Uzi but will have several features, described earlier, that the Uzi never had. Additionally, there are other guns out there these days that give you the traits and features I was looking but those are the two that immediately spring to mind.

The future of my Uzi? I’ll keep it, of course. It’s an excellent house gun, a good vehicle gun, and it has a certain visual impact that is pretty hard to get elsewhere. But I suspect I’ll be dumping some money into the Ruger PC9 to optimize it for my anticipated needs and purposes.