The Truth About Guns

TTAG would never Steyr you wrong. OK it’s pronounced “shteye-r.” But in my business you don’t cut funny. And it’s true: when it comes to reviewing products upon which your life may depend, TTAG wouldn’t give you a bum Steyr. So we can’t hand-on-heart say that Steyr’s double-action-only L-A1 Service Pistol is a great gun or merely a $560 (retail) GLOCK wanna-be. We’ll try to get ahold of a test gun for review. (Let’s hope we have more luck than U.S. gun stores, who rarely have Steyrs in stock.) Meanwhile, I’ll say this about Steyrs: they have really great, crisp triggers and the grip angle is more severe than a GLOCK’s (but they point better). YMMV. Press release via

USA Today is reporting that there was an incident in a Reno, Nevada hospital earlier today where four people were injured and eventually ended with the suspect taking their own life. Reports indicate that the incident lasted less than 15 minutes, and at this time the suspect is the only confirmed fatality. Make the jump for the info from USA Today . . .

Multiple shots were fired Tuesday at a Reno medical facility and at least one person is dead and another injured, according to police.

The shooting is at the Renown Regional Medical Facility campus, said Sgt. Albert Snover of the Reno Police Department.

Reno Police Department Deputy Chief Tom Robinson said person who is dead is believed to be the shooter.

The Associated Press reported that the gunman injured four people before killing himself.

Reno police say the man entered the Center for Advanced Medicine at Renown at about 2:45 p.m. PST with at leas

“Investigators believe a gunman who opened fire at Colorado’s Arapahoe High School had selected at least five spots he wanted to target on his rampage,” theeagle.com reports. “The Arapahoe County sheriff said Tuesday that letters and numbers corresponding to the labels of the school library and four adjacent classrooms were written in marker on Karl Pierson’s arm. Investigators are looking into who was in the rooms to see if those people were deliberate targets of the gunman.” The revelation adds weight to the “good guy w

Florida is considering a bill, HB 89, that would protect citizens who defensively display firearms or who fire warning shots, from being victimized by the law for the act of defending themselves. The genesis of the law is the fact that most people are able to defend themselves by merely showing the attacker that they are armed. This defuses the situation in the vast majority of cases: people do not want to be shot. There’s apparently no truth to the rumor that, should it be enacted, the law will be known in the Sunshine State as Jill Biden’s Law . . .

The problem the bill attempts to address is that a person who defensively displays a firearm or fires a warning shot may well be prosecuted under current Florida law. It is not uncommon for crimina

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America was originally called One Million Moms for Gun Control. In the immediate aftermath of the Newtown massacre, PR-meister Shannon Watts named the group as homage to the Million Man March; the 1995 gathering in Washington, D.C. where some 400k African-American men rallied to “convey to the world a vastly different picture of the Black male.” Shannon soon realized that . . .

A) she was in no danger of organizing a million moms for gun control B) the media might call her out on her relatively paltry support C) “1MM4GC” was only slightly more media friendly than N.W.A. and D) the name stopped her from claiming

There’s a difference between a compensator and a muzzle brake: one eliminates felt recoil, and one eliminates muzzle climb. I wrote a more in-depth article about the distinction, but that’s a basic overview. The VG6 Gamma, though, is a compensating muzzle brake, which means that it tries to eliminate both muzzle climb and felt recoil at the same time, all in the space of a standard A2 flash hider. It’s designed for those who want the smallest firearm profile possible . . .

In the world of the muzzle brake, conventional wisdom is that bigger is better. The more surface area you give the device, the more recoil-reducing force at work. But there has to be a point at which there’s a diminishing return

Whenever gun control advocates talk about “toughening” gun laws (i.e. civilian disarmament) they never talk about disarming or restricting the police. Every post-Newtown gun control law—from Colorado’s magazine limitation law to New York’s SAFE Act “assault weapons” ban—has a cop carve-out. For active and retired police. This distinction is based on the myth of the “Only Ones.” The antis consider cops the “only ones” with enough training to responsibly handle “assault weapons” and “high capacity magazines.” In case reading all our stories of negligent discharges by police isn’t enough to disabuse you of that notion, what about this via governmentfleet.com? “Roughly half of officers don’t wear seatbelts e

Gun Guys writer Dan Baum directed my attention to the latimes.com editorial A grand bargain on guns? Here’s how. The authors propose sliding fines and temporary suspensions for errant gun dealers in exchange for . . . nothing. Next up: restore the gun rights of felons convicted of non-violent offenses in exchange for permanently prohibiting people convicted of violent misdemeanants (e.g., stalking). Lastly, “expanded background checks and [nationally] expanded

Hunting in the daylight is relatively easy, but when the sun goes away the game changes. There are plenty of flashlights out there that will light up the night, but when you’re trying to unobtrusively find your way to the hunting blind or stalk some wild porkers, light isn’t your friend. You want to be able to see even without much available light, and for that you’re gunna need a night vision optic of some sort. Optics Planet’s OPMOD skunkworks offers an entry level night vision monocular that’s perfect for those looking for more stealth on a budget . . .

OPMOD’s Gen 1M night vision monocular is a re-branded Armasight unit with a few extra bells and whistles. But that’s a good thing because Armasight is a well-respected name in the night vision business. Their products that I’ve handled in the past seemed well put together and

It’s true, despite what you may hear or read, mass shootings in the United States are declining. I originally compiled this list a year ago, but given the recent situation at Arapahoe High School, it seems like a good time to revisit it. There have been several documented cases in which armed citizens have stopped what could have been mass attacks by gunmen. The Pearl, Mississippi school shooting was stopped by the vice principal Joel Myrick with a Colt .45, The Appalachian School shooting was stopped by two students with handguns. In both cases, the armed citizens threatened the shooter and stopped the mayhem without firing . . .

Pearl High School - A 16-year-old killed two st

I used to know this gardener who was a demon in bed. When those seeds weren’t being planted the gardener taught me some basic lessons about making things grow. (So to speak.) I learned to prepare the soil, spread the seeds evenly and gently cover them with soil. The planting process was gentle, rhythmic and . . . where was I? Right, it was not something I’d attempt via shotgun blast. The dispersal wouldn’t be even enough. I wouldn’t know where all the seeds had landed, so covering them all would be problematic. As would firing off shells into the ground in suburban Austin. Other than that, what could possibly go wrong? Click here for flowershell.com. [h/t DS]

“I made the mistake of reading the comments to the NYT’s article. I had to stop after reading about 15 of them. The comments did not make me nauseous or make my blood boil. They scared the living crap out of me.” JeffR’s comment underneath our post New York Times Notice Sheriff’s Refusal to Enforce Unconstitutional Guns Laws

The image above (click to embiggen) is of what KTVU.com described as a “weapons cache” discovered by police executing a search warrant in Vallejo, California on Friday. The description of the weapons seized is listed as “two assault weapons, two semi-automatic rifles, a shotgun and three semi-automatic handguns.” The shotgun and handguns are gimmes, but which of the other four weapons are the “assault weapons?”

The Range Rover stolen during the carjacking and murder of a man in Millburn, New Jersey was found today in Newark, approximately 10 miles from the site of the shooting. Both suspects in the crime are still a

I was talking to Jason at Underground Tactical Arms about the world’s first 3D printed metal gun. [Click here for TTAG's review.] The gun’s manufacturer (Solid Concepts) is based in Austin, along with precision guided rifle manufacturer TrackingPoint. I suggested that Austin has become the silicon valley of firearms. I wondered what kinds of new and different firearms could be created with a 3D printer, given that the $600k machine can produce prototypes in days and create parts that injection molding machines can’t. “You want to talk about revolutionary,” Jason said. “What about a railgun?” Turns out that the University of Texas at Austin’s

The Heller Foundation’s John Johnson writes:

In many cases, the recent spate of MDA (Mothers Demand Action) meetings is exactly what it appears to be – astroturf events rolled out by big money anti-freedom activists like Michael Bloomberg. The motions of these events are set to be on par with Mother’s Against Drunk Driving (M.A.D.D.), while appealing to the social justice bent of the civil rights movement. However, they are actually corporate sponsored skirmishes; with little, to no true moral framework. The end game is to remove firearms from the public – and they’ll use any tragedy involving guns to get their way. Basically it’s just deception masked as a grassroots movement . . .

All MDA events appeal to raw emotion only, without the tempering balance of reason or logic. Short of calling it communist in it’s approach, several defense rig

As TTAG’s resident FFL/industry contributor, I’ve been asked to write a one-year-later story about the tragedy at Sandy Hook as a segment of multi-part articles about the gun industry. Reader discretion is advised. This is an ugly business. Many gun dealers are hesitant to discuss the ugly truth, but I get to blog anonymously and share insights that many of you have come to enjoy. Let me be clear about something up front – this piece is an op-ed and is bound to shock and offend many of you. So if you’ve got the stomach for it, read on . . .

Rolling into the season in 2012 (the gun industry has seasons, hunting season/Christmas namely) the industry had several factors to contend with that I have discussed in the past. Q4 is where we make our money and pay the bills. Many dealers myself included typically post double/triple/quadruple sales volumes from summertime. We run out of stuff because our vendors run ou

Earlier today, we told you about the re-launch of Evolve which wants to be the sine qua non of firearms safety. And who isn’t for firearms safety, right? Though we don’t know what’s on the top of their current to-do list, they may want to consider getting into the remedial training of police officers in the four rules of firearms handling safety. It’s pretty obvious that the Chillicothe, Ohio PD has made an utter hash of it. Of course, whatever good Evolve can do in that area will come too late for Krystal Barrows, but we have to start somewhere, right? . . .

According to

Everybody wants to be Employee Of The Month. Who can resist the allure of reserved, close-in parking and the immortal glory of having your name and photo on the Wall Of Fame? Apparently not Willie Mitchell of Deerfield Beach, Florida. Even though Wal-Mart, his employer, gives none of these laurels to their Employees Of The Month, he completely lost his cool when he lost the award to a rival employee . . .

From the NY Daily News:

Willie Mitchell is accused of firing one round at the woman’s empty vehicle in the bizarre revenge scheme.

The woman told detectives Mitchell argued with her about their workload after she won the prize at the Deerfield Beach store. The award is for bragging rights only, but he was furious and threatened the woman before he stormed out, authorities said.

“I’m going to show you,” he told the woman