Gun Nuts

I have now signed up to shoot the Brownells Lady 3 Gun match and will be sponsored by Gun Up Publishing, but up until last week I had never seen a 3 gun match in action. So I decided to head an hour south and east of Atlanta to South River Gun Club. This was the location of Atlanta 3 Gun’s monthly club match. It was also my first time seeing the location were the ladies only major match will be held this coming October.

South River Gun Club is a maze of bays and berms. I was surprised to see shooting occurring in so many directions. While shooters are always aiming at sturdy berms, their are times when I found myself walking behind a pile of dirt, knowing that a gun was pointed at me on the other side. That being said, there is a lot of walking between stages. It seemed to be more walking than some other matches and clubs I’ve attended.

I found the shooting boxes very intriguing as I watched shooters attack each stage. While only one set up had competitors literally running between bays (though they were not carrying or wearing any gun at the time) the movemen

A friend forwarded me this video on Facebook:

After watching the video, my first and immediate thought was “that’s not a holster, it’s just a strip of leather!” My second thought was “what a dangerous and silly way to carry a gun.”

There are so many things wrong with this, it’s difficult to find one to start with. Let’s go with this: the retention on that is terrible. The only thing that keeps your gun from quite literally falling on the floor is the tightness of your belt. That means that all sorts of shifting and movement is possible on the part of the gun. I guarantee it won’t present the gun in a consistent position for draw.

The video review states that it’s $10, which is too much money for something like that. You’d be better off carrying mexican style than with this thing, and if your choice is “tuck the gun in my waistband like Martin Riggs” or “spend 10 dollars on this piece of leather”, just save yourself the 10 bucks and go buy a couple of big macs or something.

This piece of leather (I refuse to call it a holster) takes the derp of a univer

Top to bottom: Ruger GP100 Match Champion in modified Blade-Tech holster, TerraLux TT-1, Safariland Comp-III speedloaders, and 4Wheelguns.Com speedloader holders.

Ruger and Blade-Tech provided me their respective pieces of kit as part of sponsorship deals. The TerraLux is one of my favorite lights ever, and seems to disappear off my desk whenever I don’t keep a weather eye on it.

Remember that pretty Browning Hi-Power in .40 from yesterday? Those pretty white stocks…cracked after 25 rounds. I normally wouldn’t feel bad, but the gun belongs to a friend who lent it to me to test it out.

Whoops

However, it provides an interesting contrast, especially when viewed side by side with the Beretta 92 Type M reviewed below; which has extremely ugly but also very functional grips on it. The grips on the Hi-Power were a lot prettier, and obviously when it came to functional shooting, a lot worse. They were slippery and didn’t provide much recoil control, which is important on .40s, and of course they had the small issue of coming apart.

Obviously, we wouldn’t recommend such grips for a serious defensive or competition pistol, hence the tongue in cheek title of this post. I used #warriors ironical

I bought a used Beretta 92FS Type M from a friend of mine recently. The 92FS Compact is one of my favorite carry guns, and the Type M is sort of the perfect expression of that, because it’s a single stack 9mm. It holds 8 rounds in the magazine, has a traditional double action/single action operating system, and in every other respect is largely identical to its full size M9 brother, save a shorter barrel.

My gun has also been modified, it’s benefited from an action job, stippled grips which look ugly but work, forward cocking serrations, and XS Small Dot sights. More on the sights later. The trigger is one of the best examples of a traditional double action gun that I’ve ever shot, with a clean 11.5 lb take-up in DA mode and a 4 lb in single action.

The quick review consisted of tossing the Beretta into my range bag to shoot when I was heading to the range to do some serious training for Indoor Nationals; I grabbed 100 rounds of PMC 115 grain 9mm ammo on my way out the door. At the range, I found the gun to be pleasant to shoot, superbly accurate, and boringly reliable. Here is a 5

I remember when this image started making the round of the internet a while ago. People would look at it and think “oh, that’s what I’m doing wrong” because their groups would be off, or they’d be throwing shots or something like that. The problem is that this image has almost nothing to do with modern, two handed defensive pistol shooting.

The first place I ever encountered this exact same chart was when I was shooting collegiate bullseye pistol over a decade ago. That’s what it was designed for – one handed, slow fire bullseye shooting. Not modern rapid fire defensive/practical shooting. The problem is that the image doesn’t take into account all the ways the support hand can affect your shooting. So a new shooter that’s been taught a proper modern grip and stance will just be confused by all the silly nonsense on this image.

If you’re really teaching people, teach them to be observant shooters. Read their sights. If you can teach a shooter to watch their sights rise and fall, they’ll

The BHP in .40 S&W is the only .40 that I’ve ever really been interested in. When FN made the .40 HP, they actually beefed the gun up considerably to handle the increased pressure of the round. This gun, a loaner from a good friend has been off to visit a custom shop as evidenced by the front and back checkering, custom sights, and excellent trigger.

I noted a column in the Outdoor Wire about how the scoring system in the shooting sports is broken, because the way we do it now doesn’t allow for real-time spectator participation. I agree 100% with the column, and it dovetailed nicely with another rant I had about technology in the firearms industry, specifically timers.

The CED7000 Pro is a really good timer. By the standards of any other consumer electronic, it’s ancient technology tottering along. In an age of tablet computers that weigh less than a volleyball and have more computing power than my 90s era desktop, it’s ridiculous that our very best timer is something like this.

Here’s what match scoring would look like in a perfect world: you’d have an all-in-one device, about the size of an iPhone that records the time, then allows you to enter the scoring (points down, target hits, whatever). You’d have all the different shooting sports profiles entered into the device, so you could select “USPSA Match” and go to work. You wouldn’t nee

I was researching an article on running over-pressure .40 ammo in your guns (protip: don’t) I happened on this comment from a user of said OP .40 ammo which reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to write basically forever:

Incredible product. In a range full of .45s, .40s, 9mms, etc, the roar of this cartridge had people turning their heads and coming over to my port to ask what the hell I was shooting. The recoil was just the slightest bit more than standard .40 loads and the accuracy is phenomenal. For a cartridge that delivers more at the muzzle than any other auto-loader out there, you should not hesitate to try this round – thanks

Photo courtesy S&W Forum

That photo of course is the result of that sort of behavior, blown up guns and hurt hands. But what I really want to talk about is “That Guy” – every range has him, everyone knows him. He’s the guy at the public range with the SBR Mosin Nagant, or the bump-stock on his AR with the muzzle brea

In honor of valentines day (or in celebration of it passing with minimal collateral damage) I’d like to tell you a story of a great love shared by two top gunners.

One half of the pair, is a southern belle who is as sweet as she is gorgeous. The other half, is a northerner come south, who I have heard called, “the Michael Jordan of the shooting sports.” Three years ago they met at the ranch of a mutual friend while relaxing and shot gunning the afternoon away. Until that point, our story’s heroine had not been involved with pistol shooting or competition shooting, but as they became friends they spent a good deal of time at the range together.

Romance blossomed and a little over one year ago they became Mr. and Mrs. Sevigny. Not only are they a happily married couple who are planning their dream house, including a private shooting range, but they are also part of a big happy blended family. On the day we met at the Georgia Steel Chalange State Championships, I was not the only spectator following their squad. Brooke’s father and

Don’t miss the ones you love.

Reigning Production Half-Champion (because he lost to Eric Grauffel) Ben Stoeger is accepting donations to support the USPSA Junior’s Program. Donate here. You can also buy a t-shirt that will probably get you injured.

Buckle up kids, it’s time to rant. Welcome to Gun Things that Grind my Gears, or the alternate title “everything is stupid and dumb.” Whether it’s guns, gear, or people everyone has pet peeves. Here are some of mine.

Finger grooves on revolver grips
Who designed these? Seriously, whose idea was it to put a bunch of knucklebusters on revolver grips that only fit one guy with a very specific hand size? Do you have normal human sized hands? Tough noogies, these grips don’t fit you. Do you have freakish monkey-paws? These grips don’t fit. I can only assume that they were designed to fit the actual designer, and when he was done he was all “yeah, screw everyone else’s hands.”

People who say “I don’t want to rely on anything with batteries on my defensive firearm
Oh yeah, this makes loads of sense! We don’t want those fragile “electronics” on our guns! It’s 1988 and I’m scared of change! Seriously people, battery powered stuff is fine. When was the last time you heard about an Aimpoint crapping out, or a Crimson Trace laser failing? People who say “I don’t want to rely on batteries” are probably just too lazy to change the batteries twice a year. I bet their sm

Of all the comments I made on my two recent revolver posts, the two have stirred up the most responses are my insistence that a proper fighting revolver be equipped with a laser and that a fighting revolver should be DAO. I’ll deal with the laser in a later post, however I will say this: no one has ever presented to me a convincing reason to not have a laser on a defensive handgun.

Now, on the DAO issue – I look at the SA function on a defensive revolver as some kind of evolutionary dead end. It’s like wisdom teeth for your gun – you don’t need them. We still have SA notches on defensive firearms because people don’t want to learn to shoot a gun in DA mode, because that’s hard or something. Let’s take a look at some DAO revolver shooting.

Not a single time would I have benefited from shooting that gun single action. The same goes for every single other revolver match I’ve shot; even “hard” shots. Shooting it D

Breaking news: the 9th Circuit has ruled that the California May Issue law is not Constitutional. For more details see the entire decision here: http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/02/12/1056971.pdf

Photo by Shelley Rae of GunUp the Magazine.

Shouting is key. This is actually an outtake from a video I’ll be releasing next week on revolver reloads. I got a little silly.

Yesterday, we took a look at the concept of the Modern Defensive Revolver. The simple definition of the MDR is a revolver designed to be your primary carry gun. A belt gun with good sights, a good DAO trigger, and that you would be willing to take a 2-day, 500+ round pistol class with.

Some people were confused on the concept as to why we excluded airweight and LCR style revolvers. Those are great guns, but the whole idea of the Modern Defensive Revolver is to update the concept of a revolver as a primary sidearm from where it’s been stuck in the 1970s. I love my Security Sixes, but when I look at them compared to my GP100 WC, they don’t really compare favorably. So to reiterate, the Modern Defensive Revolver is the wheelgun as a primary carry gun. To sum it up, it should be a medium frame, 6 shot revolver in .38 Special or .357 Magnum equipped with a DAO trigger, good sights, and a laser.

So where does that leave guns like the Ruger LCR? That’s where the Compact Defensive Revolver comes in. People have been carrying

Last week I used Kim Rhodes’ custom Perazzi shotgun as an example of “gamer gear” because it’s a highly specialized firearm fitted to her specific needs and the shooting sport she’s competing in. It’s a magnificent tool for the task she’s asking of it, but it wouldn’t  be a terribly good choice for other shooting tasks. Along those same lines there are other bits of competition equipment that don’t work well in other environments. Take a look at an open class handgun holster used in IPSC or USPSA and it’s pretty easy to see that it would be a particularly poor choice for a police officer who has to worry about weapon retention when fighting with a combative suspect, or a member of a tactical team who has to crawl through the rafters of a building or SCUBA dive to a boat and climb on it clandestinely to get the jump on some bad guys. .

What about the guns that sit in those holsters, though? Fundamentally the competitive shooter and the defense-minded individual want about the same thing from a high-capacity polymer and steel pistol like a 2011 or a Glock 17, right? They want accuracy, durability, and above all else, reliability…but those words may carry very different meanings in their respective context. If you are a competitive shooter competing for 100 grand in a shooting sport where X count

“Hey Caleb, what’s your new carry gun?”
“Oh, it’s a single stack 9mm from Beretta.”
“A Nano?”
“No, it’s a Beretta 92FS Compact Type M. You’ve probably never heard of it.”

MAXIMUM GUN HIPSTER STATUS ACHIEVED.