Part XV: General Gun Advice
I’ve had the pleasure of answering many emails sent by people who want to know more about the Gun Thing. While several required a specific answer, there were a number of common issues, and so I’ve decided to address them in one essay.
Gun Prices
I’ve often been asked why I don’t talk much about “budget” guns like Jennings or Raven pistols—and to a certain degree, those guns makes sense for people on an extremely tight budget.
By the same token, however, if your budget is that tight, then a review of the gun is pointless, because you’re basing your purchase decision only on price.
The reason I hesitate to recommend super-cheap guns is that you never know whether you’re going to get an okay gun, or a total stinker—and that’s the problem. I know people who swear by their little Taurus pistols, but I also know people who can’t wait to get rid of that Phoenix because of its unreliability and propensity to break.
Most guns will do just fine, regardless of price, up to a point. If you’re going to shoot 50 rounds a year, a cheap gun will suit you fine. But if you start putting any real stress on a gun (even a .22), like 200-500 rounds a month, then you’ll soon find out where all the compromises were made, in order to get that price down.
What you’re buying for that extra money is consistency and reliability, most of the time.
By the same token, however, it takes a great deal more workmanship (ie. time, money and materials) to turn a good gun into a great gun. The difference between a new revolver which costs $200 and one which costs $500 is far greater than the difference between a $700 revolver and a $1,000 one, even though the price difference of $300 is the same. The “quality curve” is steep in the lower price range, and almost imperceptible in the upper range. (This does not take into account collector value, of course: we’re talking about standard new pieces here.)
Let’s be quite clear on the concept involved. The gun is a mature product: the Mauser 98 action was invented in the late nineteenth century, and has barely been improved on since. In fact, the major “improvements” in the 98 action have come about through advances in steel manufacturing, and not in design. Using modern steel, a copy of the Mauser action could last almost indefinitely.
The same is more or less true about handguns, especially revolvers. Not many design changes have come into play since the 1940s—the workings of a modern double-action revolver would be instantly recognizable to a gun designer of the early twentieth century.
As for semi-automatics, there have been more changes and there is a greater diversity of design. It will be interesting to see, however, whether a modern-day Glock pistol (which was a remarkable change in semi-auto design) will still be shooting in 2099 with the same degree of reliability as a Colt 1911 (made in, say, 1920) can shoot today.
With both rifles and pistols, however, it is really important for the individual to recognize their own abilities before spending a ton of money to “improve” their existing gun or in buying a “premium” model. Using myself as an example: I shoot my Springfield 1911 about as well as I can shoot one of the premium 1911 models, such as Ed Brown or Les Baer.
The Springfield has been as reliable as any premium 1911—so far.
So from a cost / benefit perspective, there is little justification for spending the extra $1,000 on either of the latter two pistols, when that $1,000 buys me over a hundred extra boxes of .45 ammo (that’s more than 5,000 rounds)—where my pistol skills are measurably improved by the extra practice (and never mind all the pleasure derived from the extra shooting).
And speaking of ammo, let’s talk about that issue.
AmmunitionPrice: To a large degree, the argument about gun prices is true of ammo prices as well.
Using .22 LR as an example, most budget .22 ammo will suffice for practice purposes, because the occasional “non-fire” is no big deal. Likewise, the even burning of the powder is not that critical either, when all you’re doing is shooting at soda cans.
Once you start demanding more of your ammo, however, the quality becomes more of an issue. If you’re hunting, a misfire can be problematic, and in serious target shooting, an uneven burning of the powder can cause an open group in the target.
(This is not an exaggeration. If you shoot a lot of .22, you will, after a while, be able to detect the difference in the recoil caused by uneven powder burn.)
When it comes to other ammunition, price difference manifests itself in different ways other than the reliability of the burn: in the quality of the bullet, the type of primer, and even in the quality of the brass.
Once again, however, the needs of the individual shooter should drive the price of ammo they purchase. A hunter who requires a quality bullet like the Swift A-Frame or Nosler Partition will need to spend more on his ammo than a dilettante shooter like myself, who shoots hundreds or even thousands of practice rounds for every round fired at a beastie.
This is why so many people are driven to reloading, by the way. Yes, it is cheaper to “roll your own”, but because your time is unimportant relative to the quality you seek, you can spend a great deal of it resizing cases, experimenting with different makes or quantities of powder. Such experimentation and quality control, of course, are pretty much impossible for an ammo manufacturer.
Fiinally, however, it should be noted that ammo produced in the early twenty-first century is of greater quality and consistency than that produced even in the 1970s—a fact acknowledged by most expert reloaders—so the decision to reload should be made to address the financial savings (which are considerable) and the realization that the improvements in quality are going to be made far further up the quality curve than would have been the case in, say, 1985.
And let me issue the standard warning when it comes to cheap ammo: if it’s really cheap, there’s a reason for it.
This is especially true if the caliber is “obsolete”, militarily speaking (8x54Rmm, 8x57mm, .303 Brit, 7.7mm Jap, and so on). Also, older ammo may be corrosive when fired, so exercise extreme caution with it—that $10 savings in ammo cost is going to look really puny if you have to replace your barrel after a year.
Check all your mil-surp ammo carefully before shooting. (This is obviously not true of current mil-surp ammo such as .223 / 5.56mm NATO or .308 / 7.62 NATO, which is produced in such vast quantities that its per-cartridge cost is negligible, comparatively speaking.)
Storage: Several people have written to me to ask how long ammunition can be stored.
There is probably more misinformation on this topic than on any other.
First, let me make the caveats: Unless you purchased and stored the ammo yourself, it is wise to check all ammo for signs of deterioration. This is particularly true of military-surplus stuff, which may have been well greased then stored in sealed cans—but it also may not have been treated with such care.
The chances are that if you come across some ammo of 1950s manufacture that has been stored in sealed cans, you can shoot it without fear. I myself have fired WWII-era 6.5x55mm Swede, .303 and 8x57mm ammo without incident, and likewise Korean War-era .30 Carbine. However, I didn’t even load the stuff into the rifles until I’d inspected each and every cartridge. Col. Jeff Cooper claims to have fired WWI-era .45 ACP ammo in his 1911, but even he admitted to some misgivings about it.
Ammo will not last forever.
However, if you store new factory ammo in a cool, dry environment, there is no reason why that ammo should not last up to fifty years. Certainly, one can shoot 1970s-era ammo today without qualms. (Do not “grease” your ammo before long-term storage, by the way: petroleum-based lubricants can cause primer failure, turning all your ammo into duds. Simply keep it dry—advice from the old days is just as relevant today as it was back then.)
I myself store my ammo inside military ammo cans, which are reasonably weather- and waterproof, and store the ammo cans in a cool, dry area. If you’re going to store ammo in your uninsulated garage, you may want to drop a few silica gel sachets into each can a couple of times a year, to ensure that the ammo stays dry.
One thing I do, however, is to make the ammo age issue moot, by writing the date of purchase on the box before storing it. Then I shoot the older ammo first, and thus “rotate” the ammo responsibly.
Okay, I said “responsibly”, but the fact remains that very little of my ammo lasts longer than five years in the locker—which is what I recommend to every shooter. Only my bulk ammo (7.62x39mm, .30 Carbine and 6.5mm Swede—don’t even ask me how much I have of those) may last me longer than that, and even then, most is of recent manufacture or else still wrapped in sealed containers.
Gun Improvement: I spoke earlier of “improving” one’s guns, and this requires a little further explanation. Let me start with the most obvious one.
Triggers. Without exception, most factory trigger workings can be improved upon by a quick visit to the gunsmith. When you consider the tolerances and smoothing required, it’s actually amazing that factory triggers are as good as they are.
Whatever, I recommend that everyone who buys a new pistol first shoot about 200-300 rounds through it, then take it to a reputable gunsmith for some work on the trigger. I do not recommend that anyone who is not a qualified gunsmith work on a trigger. More accidental discharges are caused by amateur trigger jobs than any other cause, and if your hunting buddy started bragging about his self-machined “2lb. trigger pull”, it’s time to hunt in a different ZIP code than he does.
Barrels. I’m not going to get into the argument over the merits of “cut” vs. “button” rifling (to name but two kinds). Here’s a quick discussion of rifling techniques for those interested in the topic.
Suffice it to say that most gun barrels leave the factory as (very) adequate bullet-delivery tubes—good enough for 95% of all shooters, anyway.
If you’re getting frustrated at your inability to get sub-1” (aka. sub-MOA) groups, and feel you must have that Volquartsen or Lilja barrel on your 10/22, be my guest. Just be aware that a great many people find that their groups do not improve after such a step, and then realize that the +1” groups are caused by, ahem, “operator error”.
All that said, however, I’d also recommend that if you just bought an old rifle and can’t get it to shoot worth a damn, you may want to have the barrel checked in case its previous owner(s) shot out the barrel. (This obviously does not apply to guns where changing the barrels would reduce their appeal, eg. a WWI-era Mauser, ‘03 Springfield or P.14 Enfield, which are not, generally, sub-MOA guns anyway.)
But I have to say this: in my fairly-considerable shooting experience, you have to work really hard to destroy a rifle barrel. Shooting corrosive ammo and not cleaning the gun afterwards is one way, of course, but it should be realized that most gun barrels have been made of good steel, and are really affected only by massive use (eg. over a thousand rounds of ammo in the case of rifles, over ten thousand rounds for a handgun) or serious ill-treatment.
Many keen shooters think that you should never fire more than five rounds through a rifle at a time, without allowing time for the barrel to cool, because the barrel may be damaged.
Nonsense.
I remember taking Miss Gertrude to the range for some friends to shoot. She absorbed well over two hundred rounds that afternoon, with little more than a few minutes break between shooters, and the barrel was just fine when I checked it later that week.
That said, of course, I don’t expect sub-MOA accuracy out of the old lady, and if you have a favorite hunting- or target rifle, you might well heed the advice of the pros, to some degree. But any rifle barrel should be able to take forty rounds (ie. two boxes) in a single range session without complaint—and if your barrel does show damage after this, it’s time to replace the barrel because it was no damn good to start off with.
One additional point: the “hotter” your cartridge, the quicker your barrel will deteriorate. The .220 Swift, still one of the fastest cartridges ever produced, has a well-earned reputation as a “barrel-burner”—and at 4,000fps, rapid barrel wear is to be expected. Ditto for all the magnumthumpenblitzenboomer cartridges like the Weatherbys and more recently, the .338 UltraMag. Rule of thumb: “magnum” in the cartridge description means shorter barrel life, not that you’re going to shoot more than a dozen rounds of .30-378 Weatherby Mag at one sitting anyway—not without shoulder reconstruction surgery afterwards.
But military cartridges, and “normal” cartridges like the .243 Win impose nothing like that kind of stress, so you can pull the trigger thousands of times before worrying about shooting out your barrel.
When it comes to pistol barrels, the stakes are raised somewhat. In the case of .22s, forget about it. I shot a small S&W revolver a while back (I forget the model) which has probably had 50,000 rounds through it, and I still managed to get 1.5” groups at 10 yards.
In the larger calibers, such as .44 Mag or even .45 ACP, however, even five thousand rounds are going to “leave a mark”, as it were. Fortunately, replacement of a pistol barrel is no big deal—especially in the case of semi-automatics, where “drop-in” barrels can be ordered from Brownells. Even revolver barrel replacement, while it should be done by a gunsmith, is a simple task.
Just be aware that for older pistols, barrel replacement may be somewhat more problematic, and considerably more expensive.
Stocks. I’m not talking about putting prettier wood on your rifle, of course: that’s pure aesthetics, and I’ll never say no to that (subject to the mil-surp reservation as above). If your rifle is shooting inconsistently, and you’ve ruled out operator error, it may require re-bedding of the action to make sure that the stock is not touching the barrel in the wrong places. I’m not going into the details of this, because others (like this guy or this guy, to name but two) can talk about it with far more authority than I can. Suffice it to know that this is one way of improving a rifle’s performance, and, I should add, it isn’t a game for amateurs, either. Be my guest if you want to try it, but have a spare stock handy.
Changing the grips on your handgun, of course, can be done to make the gun feel more comfortable in your hand, or to “fit” your hand better, and this may well improve your competency and skill. This is no small thing: everyone knows that if grips are too big for your hand, you can’t shoot properly. But a bad ergonomic fit, even if the grips are properly sized, is just as harmful to good shooting: I can’t shoot Beretta’s new Neos pistol, for example, because the space-age grips do not allow me to align sights and target properly.
MagazinesNo other piece of shooting equipment gives people as much trouble as the magazine. One respected gun writer suggested that every time you use a magazine which doesn’t work properly, take it out to your workshop and flatten it with a hammer before tossing it into the trash. You have to understand the years of frustration that went into a sentiment which suggests scrapping a $20 piece of machinery.
If there is no other advice I can give pistol shooters, it’s this: always, always have more than one magazine for your semi-auto pistol. Two is better (but only just), and four to six extra mags is the best of all.
When I purchased my Springfield 1911, I also purchased two Chip McCormick PowerMags, because I’d had excellent results from them in the past. It’s just as well I did. The Springfield magazine was so awful, I tossed it after the first range session: half a dozen misfeeds in 50 rounds was, quite frankly, unacceptable. Even worse, of course, was that I didn’t know whether the misfeeds were the fault of the pistol or the magazine. The former would require gunsmithing ($$$), and the latter simple replacement. When I swapped to the PowerMags, everything worked as advertised, and still does. (In case anyone is interested, I have about six PowerMags which I use exclusively in the 1911. I have a couple of Colt factory mags which I also use in the Camp 45, just because I had them lying around, and I keep them loaded up with snakeshot cartridges, just for fun.)
Rule of Thumb for semi-auto pistols: Feeding problems are caused by the magazine, not by the pistol.
Which leads me to my final point about magazines.
Many people write to me and ask me whether it harms a magazine to store it loaded. Does the loading place undue strain on the spring? Will the spring “give out”?
The simple answer is “No”, but with a couple of reservations.
The spring steel used in good magazines is amazing stuff. Simply put, the metallurgy results in the steel having almost no “flow”, so a magazine kept loaded will operate as well in six months’ time as it would the next day.
Now here are the caveats.
1. The only way a manufacturer can produce a magazine cheaply is to use cheaper steel—the mag case can be made thinner, of course, but then it won’t fit properly, so they’re pretty much stuck with using the same kind of steel as everyone else does, and frankly, it doesn’t matter much because that’s not where the action is. Good spring steel is, to no one’s surprise, appallingly expensive, and is consequently made in several quality grades. This is why Ed Brown and McCormick 1911 mags are so costly—they use the highest quality spring steel.
2. There is no excuse to keep a magazine loaded for longer than two months—if you’re not practicing at least that often, shame on you anyway. In other words, the prospect of magazine spring failure will be non-existent if you “cycle” your mags with some frequency. (Just remember, however, that the more you use a spring, any spring, the sooner it will fail.)
3. When magazines are stored loaded for a really long period of time, the springs have been known to weaken, but not to the degree you’d expect. How long is “really long”? I know personally of people who have fired guns which had been kept loaded and unfired for decades—and the only problems encountered were that the first or last rounds failed to chamber properly. I myself fired a .25 ACP Baby Browning which had been stored unfired for fifteen years, and the magazine fed flawlessly.
This does not mean that you can load it and leave it. As I said earlier, the problem will be non-existent if you practice often. But, just to be on the safe side, if you know that you’re not going to shoot a gun often, it would be best to leave the magazine empty. This is particularly true if the gun is not your primary carry- or self-defense piece: an heirloom, a “fun” gun, whatever. My P.08 Luger, for example, is stored with an empty mag, simply because I don’t shoot it often (maybe a couple of times a year). Ditto for some of my other magazine-fed .22 pistols and rifles, which are used with similar frequency.
But for my 1911, M1 Carbine, Camp 45 and Buckmark pistol, the issue of cycling the mags is irrelevant, because I shoot each piece at least once a month, and every mag is cycled at least twice in that period. (The Camp and M1 carbines are kept loaded because they are SHTF">SHTF guns, the 1911 is my primary carry- and self-defense piece, and the Buckmark gets about 300 rounds a month through its barrel.)
Finally, I’m going to offer a compromise, because not everyone is as fanatical keen on shooting as I am.
If you know you’re not going to shoot your gun that often, but still want it to be loaded, then load the mag with one round less than its total capacity (seven in an eight-rounder, for instance). If you’re using one of the high-capacity mags (eg. 15-round pistol or 30-round rifle), load the mag with two rounds less. This will reduce the stress on your magazine spring considerably—the degree of stress is diminished—but to be frank, the whole issue is of relative unimportance.
If you use your magazines often, you should probably replace the springs every couple of years or so anyway (or have them replaced by a gunsmith—unless you enjoy chasing springs all over the room). And if you don’t use your magazines often, I don’t want to talk to you.
If there is a common thread to all the above, it must be:
you get what you pay for. As with most things, lower price comes with its own price tag—and it’s up to the individual to decide where to make the compromise. You may decide, for instance, that the occasional misfeed in your .22 “plinking” pistol is not worth the cost of buying a $15 replacement mag. The annoyance factor, in other words, isn’t overwhelming.
I would recommend, however, that you make no compromises where it counts. Your self-defense piece should be of the absolute highest quality you can afford—and in many cases, a quality second-hand piece is better than a new cheapie.
When it comes to hunting and self-defense ammo, by the same token, I make no compromises whatsoever. I may practice with the cheapest stuff available (I am a notorious Cheap Bastard), but when something is going to die at the other end of the muzzle, I want to make sure that it happens as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But unless you’re Dirty Harry, you’re not going to shoot the expensive self-defense ammo often—fifty rounds a year, just to keep yourself in shape, compared with five hundred to a thousand rounds a year of cheap practice stuff. Ditto with premium hunting ammo: that Speer Nitrex at $25 per 20-round box should last you at least a year, but the mil-surp practice ammo (at $10 per 100) will enable you to have many happy hours at the range, keeping your eye in and your shooting discipline honed.
So let me conclude with the standard Kim salutation:
Shoot safely, shoot often, and keep ‘em in the X-ring.
