Tag: recreational shooting

Demand is Still High

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Demand is Still High

The CMP reports via email:

ORDER BACKLOG. Normally, we average receiving 2,000 – 3,000 sales orders per month and ship an order in 2-3 weeks. However, these are not normal times. Since October, 2008 we have been receiving 5,000 – 10,000 orders per month, which is several times normal. As a result, we are very backlogged and running several weeks behind on processing orders. Our staff is working up to 12 hours per day 7 days a week, and only today finished the 4,000 orders we received on 1 December alone (except for those 1 Dec orders with credit card or other problems). Customers with outstanding orders should expect orders to ship approximately 100 days from the date the order was received by CMP. We expect to recover from this surge in another 3-4 months (assuming the number of orders being received drops somewhat).

COMMUNICATION RESPONSE DELAYS. CMP is receiving hundreds of calls a day, as well as hundreds of emails. Each morning there are dozens of voicemails from the night before. Because of the large volume of constant calls in the daytime, it may take a few days for response. We have a state of the art phone system for a company our size, but the volume of calls is causing the system to do unexpected things. We apologize for any delay in responding to emails or telephone calls.

CMP STORES CLOSED 15-31 MARCH, 2009. In addition to the heavy volume of mail and estore orders, the shopping activity at both stores has been significantly higher than last year. As a result, we have had to divert more sales staff than planned from processing mail orders on the days the store is open. Both CMP stores will be closed 15-31 March. The Sales staff at both locations will work on processing mail orders in an effort to quickly reduce the backlog and shorten delivery time.

ORDERS OUT OF SEQUENCE. In normal times, CMP processes sales orders in date sequence as received, regardless of item being ordered. To help reduce the mountain of orders, we are separating the rifle orders from non-rifle orders. We have dedicated two of our staff to process the non-rifle orders without regard to dates of rifle orders still in the queue. This will result in an out of sequence delivery time for many orders, but will reduce the amount of pending orders quickly.

BUY NOW FEATURE ON CMP AUCTION. We have started using the “buy now” feature for selected items on the CMP Auction site. We are listing the M1A1 carbine, one at a time with this feature. Buy now price is $3,000. We will also list some M1A1 carbines for the regular bidding process.

LAKE CITY. .30-06 SOLD OUT. On 20 February, we posted the Lake City .30-06 ammunition as sold out. We fully expect to be able to fill all orders already in house and those in the mail on 20 February. It may take another 100 days to ship some of the orders just received.

This is Frelling Ridiculous!

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This is Frelling Ridiculous!

Ok, so I go buy a pistol chambered in 9mm EuroPellet. Now I can’t feed it!

Sportsman’s Warehouse had some .45ACP, some .45GAP and a few boxes of .38 Super +P. Wally-World? I go to the sporting-goods counter and the salesdrone says “Can I help you?” I reply, “You can if you have any ammo.” He says, says he: “I haven’t got a single round of pistol ammo.”

And he wasn’t kidding.

Midway? Sold out of damned near everything. Cheaper than Dirt, the same. Georgia Arms? 5-7 weeks delivery.

So I want to know when The Revolution is starting, because I’ve obviously been left off the mailing list.

UPDATE: Thanks to TexasRed I’ve got a thousand 124gr. Winchester NATO-spec rounds coming. Much obliged.

Another Trip to the Range

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Another Trip to the Range

No new loads for the Encore yet, but I wanted to shoot the Remington 700 some more. When I went to the Gunblogger Rendezvous last October, David of Random Nuclear Strikes gave me some of his Black Hills 175 grain .308 Sierra MatchKing commercial ammo, and I wanted to test it out as a baseline against my handloads. It was another trip to the Casa Grande range to make use of their 300 yard facility. Here’s an average group using the Black Hills stuff:


By my calibrated eyeball, Mk. I, that’s about 4″ CTC.

Here’s my 175 grain SMK handload:


The bottom most hole is two holes touching. I’d put that group at a hair under 2″.

Here’s my 155 grain Lapua Scenar load (typical) with me throwing a flyer (also typical):


What you can’t see there is that this group is about 5″ higher than the point of aim, which means it’s hauling ass compared to the 175 grain SMK load. Now, if I could just stop throwing flyers . . .

I think I need some more of those bullets.

(Sorry about the crappy quality. These were taken with my cellphone camera.)

I’m Late on This

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I’d blame it on work, but I received a nice email from reader Steve Vaujin on Tuesday about the topic, and I’m only now addressing it. I know all of you are already aware, but here it is again:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent. – Found on inauguration day at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/urban_policy/

So much for believing in the Second Amendment.

“Closing the gun show loophole” means “Ending private-party sales. All sales must go through an FFL.” This will, of course, get the support of many of the (remaining) FFLs. And it will be the first step to an eventual national registration system.

“Making guns in this country childproof.” All 300 million of them? Will this be like “childproof caps” that only children can actually open? Or does it mean “won’t go bang at all“?

“…support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.” Now, if you’re an optimist, you read this as “making the expiration permanent,” but we all know better than that. No, this means a new, IMPROVED “Assault Weapons Ban.” One that will, you know, actually ban something.

Oh, and “addressing gun violence in cities” – where it’s largely committed by and committed upon a tiny, easily identifiable demographic, but instead the .gov wants to put in place sweeping, highly restrictive laws that will affect everyone but that demographic.

The philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only HARDER!

Well, there’s a great big hole in my collection that I need to fill. I’m not a fan of the 9mm Europellet, but I have been waiting and looking for a nice custom Browning Hi-Power to fill that niche – a 13-round capacity model, with a bunch of spare magazines. When I take newbies out to shoot, the lack of a 9mm has presented a problem as I work them up from .22LR to .45 Colt. (Hmm . . . And now .260 Remington?) I think this weekend I will go shopping for an EAA Witness in 9mm, and all the spare magazines they have in stock.

Who knows, maybe I’ll stumble across that Browning!

(*Sigh* – I was looking forward to at least a few more years before the .gov finally got around to passing enough laws to make me a willing felon . . .)

Range Report – .260 Remington T/C Encore

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Sorry for the delay. Family stuff and then the drive back up to Wickenburg interfered. Plus, I have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning, so this will be short.

I drove up to the Casa Grande public range this morning after getting a late start. I did, however, remember this time to bring both range bags, so I had my spotting scope, chronograph, and laser rangefinder with me. I set up my target frame at a measured 28 yards downrange and proceeded to put ten rounds on target through the chrono getting the scope adjusted. The last four rounds went into one hole, as expected. I don’t have the data sheet in front of me, but IIRC, the average velocity was 2360fps with an extreme spread of 60fps and a standard deviation of just over 20. I was shooting Lapua Scenar 139 grain BTHP bullets seated out to an overall length of 2.880″ over 36.0 grains of Varget, touched off by CCI 250 large rifle magnum primers. (USE THIS LOAD DATA AT YOUR OWN RISK – I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOU BLOW UP YOUR GUN BASED ON DATA YOU GOT OFF A BLOG AND DIDN’T CROSS-CHECK WITH OTHER SOURCES.)

I was amazed at the lightness of the recoil (and no, I’m not kidding!) That muzzle brake WORKS. Oh, the pistol jumps a bit, and it is also LOUD AS HELL, but it doesn’t kick. I wore muffs and plugs, and I was sitting behind it. I’m pretty sure I drove off some other shooters who were off to my left. (I was on the right end of the range.)

Because of the pressures of time (I had a family commitment in the very early afternoon) I was only able to put another 15 rounds through the pistol this morning. One very impressive thing, at least to me, was that I strung five shots horizontally right along the zero elevation line of my target at a measured 300 yards. The pistol needs some trigger adjustment for sure – I’m blaming that shot string on me, though. That group ran just over four inches wide.

I settled down for the last five-shot string and got another four-inch group in the standard cover-with-palm pattern. I’m certain that this specific load will shoot better than that if I do my part properly. I was seeing a little bit of primer flattening, so I think my next loads will drop by about a half-grain, and I want to see just how far out I can seat those very long bullets before they touch the rifling. I also want to try the 120 grain Scenars to see how they perform, but their ballistic coefficient is not as good as the 139’s. I also want to take this pistol to the Tucson Rifle Club and try it out on the 500 meter rifle silhouette range to see if I have enough elevation in the scope to reach out that far without putting more offset in the rings.

This is going to be a very fun pistol!

Long-Range Pistol

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At last year’s Gunblogger’s Rendezvous, David of Random Nuclear Strikes attended and brought with him his Boomershoot pistol – a Thompson/Center Encore chambered in .308 Winchester. He also brought with him as handouts a reprint of an American Handgunner article from 1995 about Don Bower and his long-range pistols. Entitled “Ultimate Handgun Accuracy: 1½” Groups at ¼ Mile,” it certainly piqued my interest! (The piece is available at the link.)

I shot David’s pistol at the Palomino Valley Gun Club, whacking the 400 yard gong with ease.

Had to have one.

So to “celebrate” Obama’s victory, one of the things I bought in November was a T/C Encore frame. Then I ordered a custom Bullberry .260 Remington barrel. Finally I bought a Burris 3-12X pistol scope, Burris Signature Zee rings, a set of offset inserts for the rings, a Pachmayr grip, a Harris bipod, 200 pieces of Remington .260 brass, and some ammo boxes. (Bullets, powder and primers I’ve already got.) The last of the parts arrived this week.

I haven’t got everything adjusted yet, nor all the screws tightened down, but here’s what she looks like:


You can’t see it, but the action is open on that last photo. Yes, I know the scope is canted. I still have to get everything adjusted just right, but I wanted to post photos, dammit! Oh, that spirit level is the 1″ unit that Ninth Stage sent me, along with the 30mm unit for my Remington 700 5R.

I also wanted to say something nice about a vendor. I buy a lot of stuff from MidwayUSA, and their prices and performance have been uniformly good. But we gunnies are cheap frugal bastards, and price is important to us. When I went looking for rings for the Remington 700 5R, Midway was out of stock, Brownell’s didn’t carry what I wanted, and they were nowhere to be found locally. A little Google searching brought me to Optics Planet. They had what I wanted, in stock, and at a good price – even better when there was no freight charge.

When I went shopping for that Burris 3-12X pistol scope, as always the first place I went looking was SWFA.com. They usually have the lowest prices, and I’ve never had a problem with anything I’ve gotten from them. However, at the time I was looking, Midway was having a sale on the very Burris scope I was looking for, and it was less than SWFA. Unfortunately, neither of them had the Burris Signature Zee rings I wanted, so off to Optics Planet I went and while I was there I checked on the scope as well.

They had it, and it was less than Midway’s sale price. Plus free shipping. They also had the rings and the offset inserts for them. (I’ve got +20MOA of offset in the back ring.)

I ordered 200 pieces of brass, four 50-round ammo boxes, and the Pachmayr grip from Midway the same night I placed the order for the Burris scope and rings. I got the scope and rings first.

I’m not denigrating Brownells, Midway or SWFA at all, they’re all great vendors. But if you’re looking for some glass or some rings, check out Optics Planet. You might be glad you did.

Anyway, when I go to Boomershoot this year, I’m taking both the 700 5R and this pistol. Hopefully I can get some ammo loaded tonight and make a trip to the range dark and early tomorrow morning!

Brick & Mortar SUCCESS

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Brick & Mortar SUCCESS

This afternoon I went to my favorite local gunshop, Murphy’s Guns & Gunsmithing, the place where at least one salesman knows me by name. After my experience at Caveman’s Warehouse, I wondered how things’d be there. I loaded some .45ACP yesterday and discovered to my shock that my stock of large pistol primers was a lot lower than I’d thought. Caveman’s Warehouse was completely out.

Murphy’s had ’em.

However, there was an interesting sign tacked up on the primer shelf that advised that customers were limited to 1,000 primers total, due to demand. That was OK with me, because I bought exactly 1,000 Winchester WLP primers. I also found on the shelf an RCBS two-die set for the .260 Remington, which I need for my new Bullberry Encore barrel. Drooling over Perusing the stock of firearms, I found that Murphy’s now has in stock the EAA Witness Match in both .38 Super and 10mm Auto. I’d very much like to have either one of those. Interestingly enough, the 10mm version is about $100 cheaper than the .38 Super.

As has been the case every time I’ve been in Murphy’s, there have been six or more salespeople behind the counter, and almost every one of them has been busy with a customer, a firearm, and a Form 4473. As Dave, the salesman-who-knows-me-by-name put it, “apparently the entire population of Tucson won the lottery.” And it’s been like this ever since November 5.

I’m waiting for Murphy’s to take the massive profits brought about by the Obamessiah and put in a three-level parking garage out in front. It’s damned near impossible to find a parking place there. Ever.

Brick & Mortar FAIL

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Brick & Mortar FAIL

I received a gift card for the local Caveman’s Warehouse for Christmas, so I went in to see what I could pick up. The barrel for my T/C Encore came today, so I thought I’d maybe get some .260 Remington brass, perhaps some loaded ammo for a baseline comparison, maybe a pound of powder.

I wish I’d brought a camera.

The shelves are empty. Well, not completely, but I think there’s about six pounds of powder, total (what’s left is shotgun powder), about 10% of the normal stock of bullets (what’s left is premium hunting bullets), about 5% of the normal stock of brass (.204 Ruger, anyone?), and it appears that Caveman’s doesn’t stock .260 Remington loaded ammunition of any flavor to begin with.

The firearm section has a wall of pegs on which hang the majority of the handguns they have for sale, and there are usually a dozen or so in the glass display cases.

About half of the pegs are bare, and there’s two (2) revolvers in the display cases.

I asked one of the sales guys about when they might be restocking. He didn’t know. They get whatever’s on the truck when it arrives. He asked if I was familiar with MidwayUSA.

Hell, I’m on a first-name basis with Larry Potterfield. Maybe next year I’ll have to insist that I be given Midway gift certificates.

Tomorrow Caveman’s is having a big sale.

I wonder what the hell they think they’re gonna sell? Well, shotguns. They’ve got a lot of shotguns left.

Gun Sales & Me

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A lot of pixels have been spilled concerning the quantity of firearms, ammunition and accessories being purchased in the wake of The Obamessiah’s ascension. Here’s my story:

You probably already know about the M14, but here it is again. Since I sold my Mustang, I have a pretty nice chunk of change, and I decided I wanted a really first-rate M1A/M14. My previous experience with Fulton Armory was good, and they offer their Peerless M14 at a pricey, but not overwhelming price.

One problem – 12-14 month delivery.

Kind readers pointed me to Ted Brown, who has an outstanding reputation and offers rifles built on the forged LRB M25 receiver. VERY pricey, but just DAMN. That should be a piece of art when it’s done. I sent him my order last week with a deposit. The wait is 7-10 months. But I’ll be receiving the stripped receiver for transfer as soon as it comes in, just in case Obama wants to add the M1A/M14 to the banned list. I want to own the “rifle” as soon as possible. I’ve already purchased eleven 20-round magazines.

I currently own one AR15 lower and two uppers. The lower was custom built by Fulton Armory on a Bushmaster stripped receiver with all FN parts except for a Jewell 2-stage target trigger and a Ergo grip. One upper is a Fulton custom with a 16.25″ Douglas air-gauged 1:9 twist bull barrel, a GG&G extended picatinny rail, a free-floated quad-rail forend and a Harris bipod. Mounted on top is a Leupold target scope. It’s a tack-driving SOB shooting 75 grain Hornady BTHP handloads.

The other upper is a Stag M4gery with an EOTech and backup irons that co-witness.

I wanted a second lower with a VLTOR carbine stock for the M4gery.

On Saturday two weeks before the election I went in to my favorite gun shop, Murphys Guns & Gunsmithing, and asked them if they could get me an assembled Bushmaster lower without a buttstock (it’s a catalog item for Bushmaster). During that trip I bought a T/C Encore frame from them. Later in the week they got back to me: Yes, they’re available, “plenty in stock” at the vendor. I went in the next Saturday (the one before the election last Tuesday) and placed my order, paying in full up front.

I went in last Saturday to see if they’d received it.

They’d forgotten to order it.

They’re no longer in stock. Nobody really knows when they’ll be able to get one.

My VLTOR buttstock came in from Brownell’s last week. I think it’s going to be lonely for a while.

At the last Gunblogger’s Rendezvous, I shot Dave’s .308 T/C Encore, whacking the steel plate at 400 yards with relative ease. Today I placed an order for a .260 Remington barrel, stainless, with a muzzle brake, scope base and a forearm from Bullberry’s.

Delivery is running three (3) months on those.