My favorite toy
So the Army is going to be selling off its old 1911 pistols through the CMP. About time, too. Thank you, President Trump. Under The Commie Obama, these fine old things would have been scrapped, and the world would have been a poorer place.
Because as I’ve said so many times before:
…and also:
Following the Top New Guns Of 2017, we now have the list of 14 Great Pocket Pistols for Personal Defense.
I’m going to start off with a question: how can a pistol with the following characteristics be called “great”?
The magazine is, of course, a proprietary design, and only certain kinds of ammunition can be used in the BullPup9. If bullets aren’t crimped tightly enough, the extraction of the round from the magazine can mechanically disassemble the round inside the gun. Also, only a limited number of guns are produced by Bond Arms each month.
Forgive me if I shudder at the thought of ammo being pulled apart inside the gun. I’m a huge fan of Bond Arms Derringers — owned one for many years and carried it as a backup with complete confidence — but I can’t help thinking they’ve stepped outside their area of expertise here.
But that’s just an aside. There’s a bigger issue at play, and it’s this.
I see the need for a pocket pistol (or, as we used to call them, “7-11 guns”) — you shove it in your pocket when you’re out running an errand simply because any gun is better than no gun, right?
Well, not exactly. If you peruse the above list of pocket pistols, what will strike you quite forcibly is that they mostly shoot lil’ tiny boolets because if you shoot something manly (i.e. effective), the tiny frames of said guns makes them almost impossible to control with any degree of confidence and therefore of accuracy. I’ve fired enough of the pistols on the list to be pretty sure of my ground on this issue — the little Kel-Tec, for example, is cheap, handy and not too nasty, but at any distance outside halitosis range, you’re almost better off throwing the gun than shooting it.
The guns that look as though they will be effective are, surprise surprise, the ones which are basically shrunken full-size pistols like the Kimber Micro 9 and the Glock 42 — which begs the question, “Why not, then, just carry their slightly-bigger brothers with confidence?”
I don’t like pocket pistols much, and I hate them as a primary self-defense weapon. And yes, I’ve been as guilty as anyone else when sticking a little popgun into my pocket when running out to make an emergency purchase from the liquor store or convenience store, because yes, I too can be lazy.
But it’s a bad habit, and I’ve worked really hard to overcome it over the years. Now, in those circumstances, I forget the pocket pistol and go instead with my backup handgun, a S&W Mod 637 Airweight chambered in .38 Special +P.
A wise man once told me: “If you use a pocket pistol on someone, there’d better be some serious powder burns on his skin afterwards” — in other words, you use it with the muzzle pressed up against his neck or chest before you pull the trigger.
And under those conditions, don’t bother with a pocket pistol shooting its BB +P rounds; use a decent pocket pistol, such as made by the aforementioned Bond Arms, but chambered in something like .357 Magnum, .45 Long Colt or .410ga (the last two, of course, being interchangeable).
If you think of a pocket pistol as being “last-ditch” rather than “primary”, you won’t go wrong, I promise you.
To spell it out: the pocket pistol should be the third gun you carry, rather than the only one — and I would suggest that under those circumstances, you can do a lot better than any of the fourteen listed.
Via Insty comes this list.
My comments: I already own one (the Ruger Mk IV .22), and most of the others look like line extensions of guns I either have owned (e.g. Bond Arms Derringer) or am not especially interested in owning (e.g. striker-fired semi-auto 9mm pistols or AR15 5.56mm variants).
I do find this one interesting, though. It’s a .45 ACP carbine:
It might make a decent companion piece for a 1911 pistol, IF it could accept 1911 magazines as well as its issue 25-rounder (which is yummy).
Mostly, though, my overall opinion of the list is… meh.
I’ll be attending the SHOT Show in Vegas next month, and if anything stirs my loins there, I’ll let you know. (It will be a tough sell, by the way.)
Have I made myself perfectly clear?
Reader Mike G. decides to elevate my blood pressure by sending me a link to this piece of filth:
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and a number of her colleagues today introduced the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017, a bill to ban the sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Joining Senator Feinstein on the bill are [the usual set of fucking GFW tools — Kim]
They never give up, so nor should we. Please write to your senators and representatives, just to remind them that we don’t support this bullshit. (I know, they probably already know that, but it never hurts to provide pointed commentary.)
Please use calm and reasoned language instead of what you’d really like to write. I just did, so you can too.
How do I really feel about it?
Several people have asked for details on the shooting equipment we used in the Angus Glens last week.
Here’s a pic of the rifles we took up:
From left to right, they are: Combat Controller’s Browning A-Bolt, Mr. Free Market’s two Blaser R8s (the other is a “back-up” in .308 Win), my Mauser M12, and Doc Russia’s Remington 700. All of us used Harris HBLMS (9″-13″ tiltable) bipods, as they’ve proved to be the most reliable and rugged.
Here are their details, in order of seniority. (Mr. FM has been going up there for the past twenty-odd years, CC for seven, and Doc for four.)
Mr. FM:
Rifle: Blaser R8 Professional
Caliber: .300 Win Mag
Ammo: RWS Evolution 165gr RapidX
Barrel length: 24″ (six groove, 1:11″ twist)
Scope: Swarovski Gen 1 Z6i 2.5-15×56 w/ illuminated reticle + Swarovski ballistic turret
Binoculars: Leica 8×42 Geovid w/integral 1,200-meter rangefinder
CC:
Rifle: Browning A-Bolt
Caliber: .300 Win Mag
Ammo: Federal Premium 165gr Trophy Coppertip
Barrel length: 20″ — cut back from its original 24″ –(1:10″ twist)
Scope: Trijicon Accupoint 2.5-10x56mm
Binoculars: Steiner Safari 8×42
Doc Russia:
Rifle: Remington 700 M40 long action (custom-built by Fivetoes Custom Rifles)
Caliber: .300 Win Mag (Hornady 140gr)
Ammo: Hornady Superformance 180gr SST polymer tip
Barrel length: 22″ (Proof Research Carbon-Fiber)
Stock: McMillan M40A1 synthetic
Scope: Nightforce NXS 2.5-10×32mm, with ballistic turret and Vortex Optics anti-cant device
Rangefinder: Sig-Sauer Kilo 2000 (doubles as his binos)
Kim:
Rifle: Mauser M12
Caliber: 6.5x55mm
Ammo: RWS Dual-Core 140gr HP
Barrel length: 22″
Scope: Minox ZX5i 2-10x50mm 30mm tube w/illuminated reticle, on Mauser Hexalock Quick-Release mounts. Unusually, it has a German #4 reticle:
My equipment was based simply on my own experience and, as we all know, was not tested on this trip. But all agreed that my rifle and scope, at least, were quite adequate for the task. (The rifleman, maybe not so much.)
Just a few additional thoughts:
We all agree on the wisdom of using range-finders. In featureless terrain such as in the Glens (and in places such as eastern Montana and the prairie states), it is almost impossible to gauge the correct distance to target because of hidden crests, no reference points such as trees, and so on. If possible, get a range-finder that can reach out to 1,000 yards/meters at minimum — not because you’re going to take many shots at 1,000 whatever but because the longer the reach, the higher the quality. If the range-finders are incorporated into binoculars (e.g. Mr. FM’s Leica), so much the better. And when it comes to binoculars: cheap ones just don’t work, period. I tried using the “back-up” Bushnell 6×32 binos, and they were just inadequate. Leica, Swarovski, Zeiss, Steiner, whatever: don’t skimp on the quality because it will almost certainly screw up your hunt.
Ballistic turrets are not absolutely vital, but they certainly make your precision a lot easier to come by. With his turret, Doc Russia calls his shots to within an inch of point of impact at almost any distance, and his number of one-shot kills has climbed to close to 100% on flat terrain (the uphill- and downhill shots still “need work”, as he himself admits). Also: have a ballistic chart for your ammo’s performance in your rifle (the manufacturer’s specs may not reflect reality, in this regard), and keep it handy. All three of the experienced stalkers in our group had them taped somewhere (sleeve, rifle stock, wherever).
Doc also has an anti-cant device (bubble-level) built onto his scope. When the horizon is hidden in the mist or otherwise unreliable and your firing position is not on level ground, a tilted rifle makes nonsense of ballistic tables.
Personal fitness. Muscle pain, puffing and panting, pounding heart and gasping for oxygen are no way to go through hunting, son. All the pros like Craig Boddington emphasize serious exercise as preparation for every hunt. I walked a couple miles each day before my trip back to the UK, up and down quite a steep hill between my residence and the village. I should have carried a heavy pack and done the thing twice or three times a day. Even Doc Russia, who works out in the gym in his garage, referred to himself as “fat and out of condition” after his first stalk. Our Head Stalker Dougal can walk the glens all day, and has been known to run(!) up to four miles in search of a wounded deer — and even if you can’t get to that level, halfway is an absolute prerequisite.
One last point: all our rifles, as seen in the pic above, carried sound suppressors / moderators, and I cannot impress enough on my Murkin Readers what a difference these can make to hunting. Quite apart from the noise reduction (itself a wonderful benefit), the reduction in felt recoil is considerable and therefore makes target re-acquisition much quicker. The noise reduction, of course, simply turns “ear-splitting” into “bloody loud”, as we all know. (Ignore Hollywood’s depiction of a small phut! when shooting anything other than a .22 or 9mm subsonic cartridge. When sighting in our rifles on Day One, Doc touched off a shot before I could get my hands or plugs to my ears, and they were still ringing a half-hour later.) I would urge everyone to write to their Congresscritter(s) and urge them to get the HPPA (pro-moderator/suppressor) legislation to the President’s desk ASAP. It’s long past due that Americans can enjoy the benefits of suppressed-fire hunting and target shooting that our European counterparts have always had.
That’s all I can think of at the moment. Any further questions can be asked in Comments or via email, as usual.