The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
I’m looking at the economics of reloading .30 Carbine vs. just buying outright. Does anyone have experience with Georgia Arms’ 110 grain softpoint ammo? Or, failing that, the remanufactured hardball ammo that Pat’s Reloading sells?
30 Carbine, loaded with US MILITARY COMPONENTS, with WW Primers, 1000-$249.99, 500-$129.99, In stock
Twenty-five cents a shot makes that VERY attractive.
New Hampshire has a high rate of firearms possession, which is why it has a low crime rate. You don’t have to own a gun, and there are plenty of sissy arms-are-for-hugging granola-crunchers who don’t. But they benefit from the fact that their crazy stump-toothed knuckle-dragging neighbors do. If you want to burgle a home in the Granite State, you’d have to be awfully certain it was the one-in-a-hundred we-are-the-world panty-waists’s pad and not some plaid-clad gun nut who’ll blow your head off before you lay a hand on his seventy-dollar TV. A North Country non-gun owner might tire of all the Second Amendment kooks with the gun racks in the pickups and move somewhere where everyone is, at least officially, a non-gun owner just like him: Washington, D.C., say, or London. And suddenly he finds that, in a wholly disarmed society, his house requires burglar alarms and window locks and a security camera. – Mark Steyn, America Alone
Interestingly, a search of “New Hampshire” in Clayton Cramer’s Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog garnered no hits.
I took my M1 Carbine and M1 Garand out to the Casa Grande public range today for a tryout. I brought 100 rounds of Federal American Eagle commercial .30 Carbine, and a couple of bandoleers of the Greek HXP M2 Ball I bought from the CMP for the Garand. As seems to be standard practice when I go to Casa Grande, I forgot to take my spotting scope.
While I was interested in the accuracy potential of the little Carbine, mostly I was interested in how (or whether) it was going to function with the magazines I bought last year. The good news: It functions pretty damned well. I loaded ten rounds into each magazine. Out of the 100 rounds, I had one failure to feed that was very simply cleared. I had one magazine, one of the two Union Hardwares, that didn’t want to fit in the well. It did, but it’s pretty tight. Other than that, the rifle cycled like a sewing machine.
Without sandbags or any other decent rest, and my eyeball Mk. I sighting system, the Carbine was capable of holding minute-of-paper-plate at 50 yards. I’m certain that this is mostly me, and with some work I can definitely improve on that. I was startled to discover that the adjustable sight is dead-nuts on. Set at 200 yards, it hit (pretty much) where I aimed at the 200 yard berm, and set for 250 yards I was able to hit the (rather large) steel plate set into the 250 yard berm with regularity. Set for 300 yards I believe I was lobbing the rounds over the top of the 250 yard berm.
Overall, I’m very pleased! Now I just need to get some more ammo and practice!
I let some other shooters try the Garand and the Carbine. That put some smiles on faces! There was already a Garand shooter at the range when I arrived, and when I left the guys at the table next to me were shooting a Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk. I.
Damn, I love old rifles!
My CMP M1 Carbine arrived this morning! It is indeed an IBM, and the tag attached to it indicates that the barrel is IBM as well:
Interestingly, from what I can find online IBM’s M1 Carbine serial numbers are supposed to begin with 3651XXX. Mine is 363XXXX, but stamped on the receiver above the S/N, mostly obscured by the adjustable rear sight is “IBM CORP”. So do I have an IBM-assembled rifle based on a Saginaw receiver? Anyway, for those coming here for gun pron, here are some photos:
There is no “FAT” cartouche on the stock, and the stock itself is pretty banged-up, but the metal looks to be in very good shape. The bore is filthy, but the rifling looks strong. The receiver fit in the stock is pretty sloppy side-to-side. I don’t know how that’s going to affect reliability and accuracy yet.
Normally I don’t name my guns. The only one that has a name is my 10/22 – “Conan the Borg,” after my wife said upon seeing it, “That’s technologically barbaric!” This Carbine, however, needs a name. I think I’ll call it “Baby Blue.”
Back from the Match
Today’s Pima Pistol Steelworker’s match was a little different from the ones I’ve shot there before. Normally we have five different shooting bays to use, so there are five different scenarios to shoot. Unfortunately we’ve had some pretty severe rain over the last week so three of the bays weren’t available. Plus, apparently they’re going to be running a Steel Challenge shoot at Pima soon, so today’s shoot was a practice setup for that. Only four stages, but they were taken from the Steel Challenge website, modified slightly for our equipment. We don’t use a stop plate, but rather a standard shot timer, and we shot the plates in any order. Here’s a quick video of me shooting Stage 2. There are four falling plates and two silhouettes. The stage is: knock down the plates, two rounds on each silhouette, step over the shooting line (that piece of 2×2 on the ground at my feet) and engage the silhouettes with two more rounds each. Note that I’m using an 8-round capacity standard 1911. And I missed the first plate.
Here’s another shooter on Stage 1 showing you how to do it right. In this stage there are three large targets that get two hits each, and two small targets that get one hit each. Shoot them all, step over the firing line and do it again:
I’m not embarrassed by my time, but I definitely need improvement. Still, I had a lot of fun! And I wore my Heller Kitty shirt, and got a couple of compliments on it.
Quote of the Day
I pack up my gear, head to the range and in the solitude of my lane, pick up my pistol and transcend all barriers of gender, age, race and disability. I have seen so much diversity at the range, so much openness and camaraderie among those that would probably never even exchange a hello in any other situation. Guns really are terrific equalizers. They make us realize that we are all just people – fingers on triggers, a breath between silence and noise. – Breda, finding truth
This tied with one from Tam:
I love living in American-occupied America, where you can walk into Mailboxes Etc. with a Pattern 1853 Enfield replica under your arm and the guy behind the counter says “Wow, that’s a beauty!” before boxing it and shipping it without so much as a blink. – Mailing a musket
A coin-toss decided the order of posting.
I just checked my account at ODCMP.com and my order for an IBM M1 Carbine has been processed! Yay me! I was getting seriously concerned that they would run out before they got to my order. Now I can order brass & bullets. (I’ve already got magazines.)
Guess what I’ll be bringing to the Gun Blogger’s Rendezvous this year?
First, in May I got to celebrate TSM‘s fifth blogiversary by going to Louisville to attend the NRA convention/2nd Amendment Blog Bash. As a result of that, in August I get to go to Blackwater in North Carolina and shoot Para-USA‘s pistols and ammunition. Then in October I’m off to Reno for the third annual Gunblogger’s Rendezvous!
Now, y’all are planning to attend GBRIII, aren’t you? It’s time to make your reservations and travel arrangements! You never know which airline might be going out of business next! I’m driving, but I made my hotel reservations this evening and I’ve got my check for the pizza dinner all made out and ready to mail.
C’mon, Reno in October is beautiful! Come hobnob, gnosh and imbibe with with us! Throw some rounds downrange on Saturday! Shoot other people’s ordnance! It’s a great weekend!
Well. THAT was Different!
I shot my first night match yesterday. The Tucson Action Shooter’s Club runs its Summer matches in the evenings. I missed last month’s because even at 4:00PM the temperature was still 108°F. I enjoy shooting, but even I have my limits. However, yesterday it wasn’t too bad, and despite the prediction of rain it didn’t look likely, so off I went on my 37 mile drive to the Tucson Rifle Club. According to the web site, the shoot is supposed to start at 18:00 (that’s 6:00PM for us regular folks) but I got there at just a bit after five, figuring I’d help set up.
I was the first one there.
Nobody else showed up until nearly six.
The first shots didn’t go downrange until about 7:00, as the sun was setting over the berm – directly into the eyes of the shooters.
We shot four individual stages, and two “team” stages. While we were shooting, we watched a spectacular thunderstorm roll over the greater Tucson area (well to our East and North). The weather was warm, but there was a constant, cooling breeze. It was very pleasant. As the day got darker, we ended up shooting under the lighting of halogen lamps, and one stage was shot illuminated only by traffic flares.
I had a couple of malfunctions. I didn’t seat one magazine properly and resulted in a jam, and on one stage I decided to switch from my Kimber Classic to my Eclipse because the Eclipse has tritium night sights. Mistake! I haven’t shot the Eclipse enough and it still needs breaking in. I had a jam with it, too. I was reminded of a line from the movie The Ghost and the Darkness when one hunter is convinced to leave his trusted 7×57 Mauser in favor of a bigger caliber rifle – that fails him at a crucial instant, nearly getting him killed:
You went into battle with an untested weapon?
Oops!
Oh well, while I wasn’t a speed-demon, I didn’t finish last either.
Now I need to find a fiber-optic front sight for my Kimber Classic. On one stage, lit from behind the shooters, the front sight just disappeared on me. I actually looked at the pistol to make sure it hadn’t fallen off! It was still there, but the lighting gave it the same albedo as the backstop and targets.
We finished shooting just after 9:00PM, as the tail of that big storm was sweeping Westward toward the range. There was a mad hustle to get the targets, stands, and barriers into the storage container before it struck. There was a lot of nervous joking about handling lightning rods as we picked up. I got off the range about 9:20, and drove through some of the hardest rain I’ve seen in a while. What was normally a 45 minute trip turned out to be almost an hour. It was a good shoot. I look forward to next month’s.
Here’s a good example of what you can expect to see when Michael Bane films the Para/Blackwater shoot next month:
I hope they edit.
A lot.
Edited to add: Muzzleflash is COOL!
Remember to Pay Your Domain Fees!
Somebody at Wilson Combat has some ‘splainin’ to do!
UPDATE: Looks like it’s fixed now. Move along folks, nothin’ to see here.