Tag: guns

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Ah, No. I Don’t Think So.

For some reason my urge to add a Browning Hi Power to my collection has returned. I looked at an inexpensive Inglis model at a gunshop a couple of days ago, but it was a bit on the worn out side. So I did a little research looking for new ones. Sportsman’s Warehouse had a two-tone .40S&W about six months ago that I passed on. It (of course) is gone now. So I did a little web shopping.

It would appear that the only version currently available (25 in stock at the distributor) is this model:

As Rachel Lucas put it so politely: I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Ah well. It’s less expensive than this Cylinder & Slide custom job:

Which I absolutely lust after, but cannot afford.

Still, I think I’ll pass on the camo. I’d probably set it down somewhere and never find it again.

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And Now for Something Completely Different….

You know, this is supposed to be a gun blog. Well, sort of. I am a gun-nut, after all. However, I don’t post on the topic of boomsticks, their accessories, and the shooting hobby all that much. I think the last post was about my new gunsafe.

Well, I just ordered another doo-dad. I’m a handloader, but like most the part of the job I find most tedious is measuring out powder charges. With a progressive press there’s an automatic powder measure, but those really only function well with ball, small flake, and very short extruded powders. Hand-operated powder measures aren’t much better. With stick powders and some flake powders, the consistency can be very poor. Since the purpose of handloading ammunition is to build better-than-factory quality ammo and not blowing your gun up, consistent powder charge weights are a must. This means, generally, weighing out each individual charge.

A while back I bought an electronic scale and a powder tricker which allows me to throw an underweight charge with a hand measure, then “trickle up” the charge to the desired weight. That works well. It also takes for goddam ever.

So tonight I dropped a chunk of change on one of these:

That’s an RCBS Chargemaster dispenser and electronic scale package. Just plug it in, run the calibration setup (60 seconds), load the powder hopper, set a charge weight, and you’re off! It dumps a perfectly measured weight of powder, ±0.1 grain, in about 20 seconds. It’s gotten terrific reviews at MidwayUSA, and it’s on sale.

Mine should arrive about next Thursday, which is good, because I’ve got about a thousand rounds of .45LC that need to be loaded, and another thousand 5.56×45.

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I Finally Got a Safe.

I’ve had a cheap-assed Stack-On gun cabinet for a while, but my collection overflowed its capacity even before my father-in-law sent his guns over here. So, for my birthday (using some of our non-interest-bearing 2006 payroll savings plan) I went out tonight and bought a gun safe. It’s this one, the TG33F model, only I bought it from Sportsman’s Warehouse so it carries a “Yukon Gold” nameplate, and it’s black. I was going to get the smaller version, but my wife said “Get the bigger one. You’ll fill it up eventually.”

I love my wife.

Now I just have to figure out how to get a 675lb. safe from the store to the house, and then into the house.

September?!? But I Want it NOW!

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The Civilian Marksmanship program has given us a little more info on the M1 Carbines it received:

We have started the inspection of the M1 Carbines that were recently transferred to the CMP. Because the carbines were received with the bolts removed and many are in heavy preservative, the process is taking longer than expected. The carbines will not be ready for sale on 1 March. We will begin accepting carbine orders for Inland carbines on 30 April, 2007. Carbine orders received prior to 30 April will be returned to the sender. Other manufacturers will not be available until later in the year. At this time no decisions have been made as to pricing. We are not accepting orders or establishing waiting lists at this time. Next CMP Sales update is planned for 23 March.

We do not expect to find any ‘collector’ or ‘correct’ grades.

We do not expect to have a “field” grade for these carbines.

After all the carbines are inspected and graded, any remaining receivers or barreled receivers will be put up for sale at that time. We do not expect this to happen for another 12-18 months.

We do not have magazines, slings or oilers. Carbines will not be sold with magazines, slings, or oilers. If we are able to acquire any of these items, we will list them for sale separately at a later date.

Now, here’s the bad news:

ITEM MANUFACTURER PRICE COMMENTS**
R017IN INLAND TBD Accepting
orders beginning 30 April 2007. Carbine orders received before 30
April will be returned to sender.
R017UD UNDERWOOD TBD Not accepting orders before Sept 2007
R017Q QUALITY
HARDWARE		 TBD Not accepting orders before Sept 2007
R017NP NATIONAL
POSTAL METER		 TBD Not accepting orders before Sept 2007
R017IBM IBM TBD Not accepting orders before Sept 2007
R017SA SAGINAW
SG		 TBD Not accepting orders before Sept 2007
R017ST STANDARD
PRODUCTS		 TBD Not accepting orders before Sept 2007
R017WIN WINCHESTER TBD Not accepting orders before Sept 2007
R017RO ROCKOLA TBD Not accepting orders before Sept 2007
R017SG SAGINAW
S’G’ (GRAND RAPIDS)		 TBD Not accepting orders before Sept 2007
R017IP IRWIN
PEDERSON		 Auction Auction Only
AUCTION
***
 Auction Auction Only

So, no IBM until after October at the earliest, and jeebus only knows what the price might be. Damn.

My M1 Carbine Magazines are In!

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Yes, they’re GI, too. In very, very nice shape. Only one is really coated in cosmoline. I have received the following:

2 – International Silver (IS)
3 – Seymour Smith (SS)
2- Union Hardware (U)
1 – Winchester (BW)
1 – National Postal Meter (MN)
1 – IBM (OIB)

The IBM is the one most heavily coated in cosmoline.

I hope like hell that when the CMP releases the carbines for sale they have some IBM ones available. My dad spent 33 years working for Big Blue. It’d be kinda cool to have a real “business machine” made by them.

Anybody Know a Good Source for .30 Carbine Mags?

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The only one I’ve found for good-condition GI-issue is J&G Sales out of Phoenix, but $24.95 a pop is pretty pricey. From what I’ve seen, “some surface rust” at some other sites might well mean “looks like a lace curtain.” As I mentioned before, I fully intend to get a CMP M1 Carbine when they start selling them in March, and I’d like to have ten or twelve magazines to go along with it. According to reports, the CMP has rifles, but no magazines to speak of.

One More Example of the Futility of Prohibition

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I have posted previously on the illicit gun manufacturing industry in Pakistan. (Check out some of their work. It’s exquisite.) Dave Kopel, in a February 6, 2002 NRO piece reported that residents of the island of Bouganville, blockaded by Australia in their fight against mining interests and the governments of both Papua New Guinea and Australia, had begun making functional copies of the fairly sophisticated M-16 automatic rifle. They’d started out with crude single-shot weapons, but had learned, rapidly.

So I’m not at all surprised to find out via David Hardy that there are gunmakers in the Phillipines manufacturing handguns and submachine guns at remarkably reasonable prices. Here are the key parts of the Taipei Times piece:

Ronberto Garcia picks up a freshly-made, well-oiled automatic sub-machine gun from a formica table under a huge gazebo and screws on a long silencer.

“We sell these guns to anyone, provided they have money,” Garcia says, proudly showing the weapon to a group gathered in his heavily secured concrete home.

—

“We are just plain businessmen who sell something people want,” the portly 53-year-old Garcia said in his home….

—

Guns made in Danao have become so famous that Japanese Yakuzas were known in the past to fly to the central Philippines to collect them, townsfolk say. Military officials as well as local politicians also buy them for their own purposes.

“Everyone buys from us. The military officials, some foreigners too, and civilians for their protection,” Garcia says, but stops short when asked if he has ever sold firearms to communist guerrillas who proliferate in the countryside.

Danao guns are bought on a cash basis, and deals are done without any papers changing hands. Word of honor is important between buyer and seller and anyone seeking to buy is screened thoroughly.

—

There are no actual figures as to how many guns are produced in Danao at any given time, but Garcia estimates up to 500 units of various gun models are smuggled out of the area every month.

Father Guido Sarducci’s Five-Minute University, Economics: “Supply and-a Demand. That’s it.”

When guns are severely legally restricted, a black market will spring up. A lucrative black market. And the people the legal restrictions were enacted to disarm will still be armed. But the law-abiding won’t be. There’s that cliché again: “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” And these manufacturers don’t report to the government. They sell to anyone with the necessary cash.

Gun manufacturing isn’t rocket science. Pakistanis with hand tools and bench vises can build perfectly functional automatic weapons. Take a look at an M3 “Grease Gun” some time. Here’s one disassembled so you can see just how simple it is.

Grease Gun

Stamped out in the thousands by GM’s Guide Lamp division for WWII, it is simplicity itself. Each unit cost the U.S. government $20.94 in 1942, according to a recent issue of American Rifleman magazine. That’s the equivalent today of $262.75, for a highly reliable, .45 caliber, fully-automatic weapon, at a profit. And I could build one in my garage today.

“Reducing gun availability” in an effort to “make us safer” is a pipe-dream, and always has been.

Range Report

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[Monty Python]And now for something completely different.[/Monty Python]

Saturday morning about o’dark-thirty I got up and took a look out the window. The sky looked pretty overcast, so I thought I’d put off a trip to the range until Sunday. However, as the sun came up, it didn’t look quite so bad. I logged on to weatherunderground.com and checked, and the chance of rain was slight, so I went ahead and loaded up and off to the range I went.

Despite $3+ per gallon gasoline, I drove the 70+ miles up Interstate 10 to Casa Grande and went to the newly refurbished Elsy Pearson rifle range which just reopened on Friday after extensive berm work. I took four weapons with me: My newly restocked and refinished M1 Garand, my trusty custom AR-15, my recently problematic Kimber Classic Stainless, and my latest acquisition, the S&W M25 Mountain Gun in .45LC.

This was my first chance to get the Garand sighted in again after having it refinished by Mac’s Shootin Irons. Mac disassembles everything, including the front and rear sight assemblies. I’d taken two targets with me; a large cardboard box I could staple paper targets on to (the range has no target stands), and one of my 9″x11″x1″ AR500 steel plate swingers. I set the cardboard up at about 100 yards, and the swinger up at the full 250 yards the range permits.

The Garand, true to form, functioned absolutely flawlessly, shooting about 4 MOA off the bench with Korean milsurp 147 grain ammo. I was even able to whack the swinger at 250 yards once or twice out of each clip of eight. At 250 yards, that 9×11 target is NOT very big over iron sights. I’ve now got the Garand sighted in for 250 yards, which should be sufficient for anything from point-blank out to 300+.

Next I tried out my AR with my 75 grain HPBT Hornady handloads. Using 24.7 grains of surplus WCC846 powder, LC brass, and an overall length of 2.245,” I literally could not miss the swinger unless I really screwed up. I beat that thing like a rented mule. Now I just need to learn to shoot like that offhand.

I’ve been having problems with my Kimber since I installed a Cylinder & Slide Safety-Fast-System. Yes, I’m one of those people who just doesn’t care for cocked-and-locked carry. The SFS allows you to carry the 1911 safely with a round in the chamber, hammer down and locked. Flick off the safety and the hammer springs back, ready to fire. Very, very cool. The kit came with a nice extended slide stop, but ever since I installed it I’ve been getting intermittent lock-open of the slide in the middle of a magazine. That was really irritating, so I recently reinstalled the original Kimber slide stop. The problem went completely away. I ran about 150 rounds through it without a hitch. I’m good to go again.

Finally, I worked on my Mountain Gun loads. The last time I tried it I was getting very high extreme spreads in velocity and concomitantly poor accuracy, so I switched from Winchester WLP primers to Federal 155 large pistol magnum primers, still using the same powder charges of Alliant 2400. Well, the extreme spread came down just a bit, but velocities did not improve. I want to get to right at 900fps. I think I’m going to work up to a sixteen grain charge under the Cast Precision 300 grain LBT gas-checked bullet, and if that doesn’t work any better I’ll try another powder.

Anyway, it was a very nice morning at the range, but I discovered that I’ve almost run out of the 384 rounds of .30-06 on clips that I bought shortly after I purchased my Garand. As soon as I got home I ordered two more cans from Aim Surplus. I really wasn’t a fan of the M1 before I bought one, but I’ll admit now, it’s one of my favorites.

New Gun!

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Well, new to me, anyway. Remember back in May 2004 when I said I was going to purchase a S&W Model 25 Mountain Gun chambered for .45LC? And then didn’t?

Well, at lunch today, I did. It looks just like this:

My favorite gun shop had a used one I found a couple of weeks ago. I traded in my Ruger SP-101 (that shot really low), scrounged up some cash (thanks, honey!), and bought it. Now I have to get some dies, brass, and bullets. Anybody have a favorite .45LC load they want to share?