Range Trip with new Form 1 toy.

Well it took long enough but I finally got the ok to assemble my new short barreled AR. And thanks to the delay (courtesy of BATFE), I got to purchase the new barrel at panic-buy prices and I was lucky to get it at all--everything is out of stock these days.  But the build is a Colt 733, or an XM-177a1 if you prefer, minus the 177 five-inch long flash hider at the end of it's 11.5" barrel. It's an actual Colt barrel (at Colt barrel prices) because it's all I could find, and it's on a vintage A1 upper. Admittedly, it's short. and light. I think I like it.

And I skipped the moderator/flash hider from the old XM-177 versions because technology has improved somewhat since the early 1970's and now we have things like the Gemtech HALO suppressor, which brings the length back up again but still renders this little shorty pretty much hearing safe and flashless. (Without the can it's got an impressive big gun roar and flash.)

And here to demo it on the range is the adorable Sunshine, firing an AR for the first time ever.

"It's heavy."

Yeah. Wait until next time when I hand her an M1 Garand.

 

 

Quiet on the range...

I got a call from the gun shop this morning. My Form 4 was finally approved for a suppressor that I'd bought about a year ago. Much of the delay was THIS SHOP not forwarding everything to BATFE as they should have--and no, they didn't offer to do anything to make it right--but it finally cleared and I went to pick it up and put some rounds through it today. And I was in awe, as it was actually quieter to me then the unsuppressed pistols being fired an the adjacent firing line on the other side of a brick wall and a steel door.


The can is the Acadian Arms Defender made right here in Lafayette, Louisiana.

I got in on the first production run of the new Defender and I got it pretty cheap. I chose it after evaluating their Predator model, and I was impressed with that one, but this one is better. Just 6" long at 13oz, it brings a 5.56mm muzzle blast down to actual hearing safe. I was shooting my 18" HBAR on the indoor range with just foam plugs in my ears and I felt no discomfort at all. Normally pistol shots bother my ears with foam plugs alone, which is why I use plugs AND ear muffs when I shoot. Unless I'm shooting this one. Heck, if I was outdoors and not shooting next to a brick wall I probably wouldn't have even needed the plugs.

As far as I could tell, the Point of Impact didn't shift a bit. This can is light enough that you hardly notice the extra weight on the end of the barrel, unlike say a Gemtech HALO. Only downside is that being so light it heats up fast, but it is rated for full-auto per the manufacturer. I have it on a Special Purpose Rifle (SPR) though so rapid fire shouldn't be a problem. It can be fully disassembled for cleaning with just one hex-head wrench and it comes with some anti-seize grease for the threads when you install it. This one is direct thread, so no fancy (and expensive) proprietary muzzle devices are needed but that does mean that it goes on one particular rifle and stays on that one. I bought this one specifically for a particular rifle though so that's not an issue. It's a fine addition to my 18' HBAR with a variable power Leupold Mark AR 3-9x40mm scope.

Now I just need to grab a good bipod and sling for it and I'll be all set. (I'm still kicking myself for selling a bunch of Harris bipods that I'd bought used from Springfield Armory at Camp Perry one year. The money I got was good at the time and badly needed but I could have used every one of those bipods had I only held on to them. Sigh...)

My Liberal acquaintances are all asking me lately if I own an AR-15...

Why no, I do not own "an" AR-15.

HALO!

So I got my tax stamp today and went to pick up my new suppressor.

The can is a Gemtech HALO, and Aaron of the Shekel and I each bought one several months back. They were listed as used demo models, but when I first saw mine, I was shocked to find nary a sign of use on it...and for less than half the price of a new one.

Anyway, it fits nice on my 16" carbine that I built up post-Sandy Hook, when it really looked like the Dems had the numbers and the resolve to hose us on ARs. But they did not, and as a result, I ended up with two more ARs that I really didn't need. One is my Special Purpose Rifle (SPR) and the other is this handy carbine, now decked out for quietness.

The older HALO is still a bit on the heavy side, and it's noticeable but not impossible to deal with. But it makes the rifle "hearing safe' by lowering the decibel level to the point where hearing protection is not required. (Still a good idea in non-emergency shooting though, but this rifle exists for emergencies.)

The HALO can also be moved between other rifles with NATO flash hiders but for some reason it would not quite fit onto my SPR, which also has a standard AR-15 flash hider. Oh well...guess I got to get another can just for that rifle. (I was gonna do it anyway.)

Happy times.

NOTE: For Unhappy times, check out Aaron's post about how the same seller, Stephen Douglass at Paducah Tactical in Kentucky, screwed him out of a suppressor and his money. Fuck you, Stephen Douglass!

SPR coming along

I finally decided on a scope for my new rifle project. I went with the Leupold Mark AR 3-9x40mm after all. My basic intent with this project was to mirror the US military's Mk 12 Special Purpose Rifle, only without dropping $4,000+ on the thing.

First off, I want to thank everyone who gave other suggestions. I checked them all out, and from those found even more to look at, but I finally drifted back to the Leupold. And after taking it out just once, I'm glad I bought it. The clarity is amazing, and in the 3x setting, it still functions like a traditional red dot thanks to the Leupold Fire Dot, an adjustable electronic sighting dot in the middle of the mil-dot reticle.

That green dot draws your eye right to reticle center FAST even at low setting. It's much handier than I thought it would be.

I mounted it on a LaRue Tactical SPR/M4 QD mount and it mounted with very little difficulty. (Full disclosure, I had scope rattle in the mount at first but a quick call to LaRue's customer service line and they diagnosed the problem--you need to tighten the bottom screws first instead of doing them cross-pattern like car lug nuts, which I had done. Once I undid it and redid it their way...rock solid!)
Once zeroed, it was just a matter of placing this dot in the 10-ring of the 100M target and depressing the trigger. Best group from the bench with my range bag for a rest was four out of five rounds touching in the middle of the 10-ring with basic 55gr handloads. And when cranked up to 9x, I can actually see my 5.56 bullet holes on the target, eliminating a need for the spotting scope at 100M. At longer ranges, I foresee great things coming from the mil-dot and serious ammunition. And since it's the same reticle system as my Savage M110's Super Sniper 10x, I don't have to try to learn another sighting system.

Now all it needs is a Harris bipod, a quality sling and mounts, and a suppressor, and it'll be all set.

Oh--and perhaps a case of two of 77gr. Mk262 ammo.

Set up thusly, I think she'll do anything I want done out to 600M or so. Anything past that...it's the Savage, at least until I get the next planned project rifle in 6.5 Creedmore completed.

New rifle project: The SPR

Just so no one thinks that the dogs and I are out of the gun business, here's the scoop on my current project, a Special Purpose Rifle, or SPR.

This one started out as one of those lower receivers that I bought a few years back when it looked like Obama and the Dems were actually going to pull a serious semi-auto ban. Remember how they tried to exploit the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School to do that? Well I snapped up a couple extra lowers at a price I'm ashamed to admit, and one of them eventually became my suppressed .300 Blackout SBR with the 9" barrel.

The other one sat around unused and unappreciated for a while, and I kinda figured that the last election might go to the Hildebeast and if that happened, this AR receiver would likely have attained some good value, monetarily and otherwise. Of course that didn't happen, and now the market is so glutted with ARs and AR receivers that you can hardly give them away, much less sell them for what I paid for this one. So what to do with it?

Well recently I started cleaning out the house, to include the gun room, getting rid of excess property and making a bit of cash where I could. I sold off enough junk that I could easily afford to complete this rifle, or at least get off to a good start. And here's where it now stands, as of today:

It now sports a flat-top upper and an 18" barrel made of 416R Stainless steel. It has the .223 Wylde chambering and a 1-in-7" twist. In short, it's a pretty credible barrel that should provide decent service, ideally as good or better than my A2 HBAR and with a lot less weight. Its got the very lightweight low-profile keymod full-length free-floating hand guard, and I'm about to go back into the lower and upgrade the trigger and add an ambidextrous safety, because I am a lefty. It also currently sports a vintage M16A1 stock, both to trim a bit of length and weight off and also because I just happened to have one lying around.

The rifle is also going to get a good variable-power optic--I'm looking hard at the Leupold Mark AR 3-9x40mm--and a suppressor. I'll finish it off with a quality sling set-up and a light bipod and it should be just the thing for some of those intermediate-range shots I might have to take should we get another Katrina event or the Dems regain power and their Antifa brownshirts start running amuck.

Stay tuned. This rifle's gonna get good.

A rifle with an identity crisis

I saw this rifle at the range Saturday morning, and I felt so sorry for it.

I had to go over and look at it to see if it was real. And then I had to go all the way back to my car to get my phone to take pictures, because no one would believe it.

And the owner: Dead serious about how great it was...and getting set to put another one together just like it for his girlfriend.

Yep. the rifle has two scopes--once with a "rangefinder good out to a thousand yards" (per the owner*). The upper scope is a red dot "for close-in tactical work".

The big thing on the side of the large scope is a light, with a red lens attached with electrical tape. The "lens" has tee word "LEE" on it, indicating that it began life as the cap to a Lee powder measure. But it does have a really nice Globe and Anchor on the mag well. The owner says that he's a former Marine. He also says that he built this rifle based on his experiences in the Marines. I didn't even go down that rabbit hole with him.

The other side: Just a bit busy and cluttered.

Note the cord from his red light on the right side that goes down to the left side of the pistol grip. Yeah, that'll never be in the way or get snagged on anything...

And it's "blessed" with both a bipod AND a Gripod, because you can never be too steady. And yep, that's a second light on the forward end of the handguard. This one's white though.

Out front, it's got this muzzle brake that's "precision tuned to dampen the recoil down to where you never even feel it". (As if adding thirteen pounds of junk to the rifle isn't gonna do that already.) And it's got prongs on the forward edge "because it's a bayonet, too. Razor sharp. Drive that right through somebody." Yeah, maybe if the bipod doesn't get 'em first, I guess.

This rifle is such a hot mess that it hurt my feelings.

The only thing missing is a sling, to actually help carry it.

View from the rear.

It wasn't a hoax prop. He was really shooting it and proud of it. With 40-round magazines, of course, "because the thirty-rounders run empty too fast in a real fight."

Like I said, I felt sorry for the rifle. It wasn't the rifle's fault that the owner let a Cheaper Than Dirt catalog throw up on it. I'm sure that underneath all that crap, there's a decent rifle in there somewhere.

Call me old-fashioned, but I keep my rifles trim and lean and tailor them to a specific task or role. If I want a rifle to do two different jobs, I get two different rifles and set one up right to do each job. I have distance rifles and I have close-in rifles. I don't try to play golf with one club and I don't try to handle every course of fire with just one rifle. I love my Savage 110 Tactical .308 but I wouldn't try to clear a house with that. I have an Uzi and a suppressed AR in .300 Blackout with a 9" barrel for that sort of thing. I wouldn't shoot any of those in a High-Power match or go hiking in the desert with them. Different weapons for different tasks.

Unless you'r a "former Marine". Then I guess that you do this:

*All statements in quotes were actually said by the owner. I shit you not.

Range Trip...Meh. But new AR Carbine!

Some days, even the range isn't fun.

Today, I went out with J.R. and Proud Hillbilly. I brought a few items that needed more testing, specificaly the Uzi with it's new suppressor, the Reising, and a new AR carbine that I just finished putting together. And while J.R. was having a great day with his custom Ruger 10-22, I was getting nothing but grief from my own hardware.

To begin with, the Uzi is still choking on my 147gr. reloads. Every few rounds, I'll get one that for whatever reason stops the bolt before it goes fully closed. I can't see anything wrong with these rounds, and it always fires them on the second try, but whatever the problem is, it's stopping the gun. And the only ammo that it's doing this with is my subsonic loads, so I can't just blame the gun, which would be my choice since I can easily fix a gun problem just by swapping something out. Needless to say, by the time that I set the Uzi down on the table, I wasn't happy.

Then the Reising totally pissed me off with a near 100% fail to chamber rounds. This one I can at least chalk up to the Tula steel-cased ammo that I bought for this test--obviously the old gun doesn't care for the Tula. Still, it was a day wasted, a gun dirtied and I have ninety rounds of Tula steel-case that I have to get rid of.

Next, PH and I shot pistols for a bit. She had her Glock with some reloads that she's put together and I set up my chronograph to check her loads. They could probably stand a bit more "oomph" but the velocity consistency was great considering the equipment that I know her to be using. She's obviously not just slopping the rounds together. I shot my Smith and Wesson Model 58, and together we took turns shooting at a plastic laundry detergent jug placed on the backstop berm. Big difference indeed between the impacts of her lightly-loaded 9mm full metal jacket rounds and my fairly hot .41 Magnum lead semi-wadcutter rounds.

Now I was feeling a little better. When the guns and ammo work like they should, recoil therapy quickly makes all the world's problems go away. Sigh.

Then it was time to try the new rifle, which is actually not "new" new, as I basically re-purposed my old 16" .300 Blackout rifle by putting a new 16" lightweight 5.56mm barrel on it with a mid-length gas system. Fact is, the .300 was nice, but I didn't need it as I now have the short-barreled .300, and rather than just let it sit or sell it off, I figured why not recycle it into something I'd get more use out of?

So here it is, with it's matching green Magpul furniture and it's Aimpoint PRO on top.

It's an Essential Arms lower with an Aero Precision upper, a Del-Ton lightweight barrel and miscellaneous pieces and parts from out of my spare parts box. I decided to stay with the traditional AR front sight base, and I went with a mid-length gas system on this one, but for the advantage of a longer/lighter recoil impulse and a longer sight radius. The Mag-pul rear back-up sight lines up perfectly on the FSB even through the Aimpoint optic and both are now roughly zeroed to the point where I'm at least not unhappy with them.

And yes, that is an old three-prong early M-16 flash hider on the muzzle. While I will eventually mount an AAC 51-tooth flash-hider on there which will allow me to put the Blackout's suppressor on it, that'll have to wait another paycheck or two. So in the interim, I figured a standard A1 or A2 flash hider'd be just fine. Only what did I not have in my spare parts box? That's right--not a single birdcage flash hider. Fortunately I did still have this old three-prong sitting on my desk as a paperweight, so I pressed it into service on this rifle until I could get something better. Still you have to admit, it looks pretty cunning, eh?

And something else I added to this one is a proper Ambidextrous safety. When I was out in Utah last year taking that great carbine class with Warrior Six, I learned that an ambi safety is an absolute must-have for a left-handed AR shooter. So I got this one from Rousch Sports, and I'm impressed enough with it's fit and function that I'll be ordering more for my other ARs.

So how did it shoot, you ask? Well the first round fired was a malfunction as the spent round refused to extract. The second and third were misfires too, and as PH can attest, I was ready to lose it, this coming on top of the failures of the two subguns. But then I realized that I was shooting this crap:

This 42-grain frangible ammo from Federal is meant to replicate the ballistics of the M855 62gr. green-tip ball ammo in a "safer" and lead-free form for training. I was blessed/cursed with a gift of a thousand rounds of it last year just before my carbine class, and it fouled my rifle up so often that I won special mention for the speed and style with which I executed my countless malfunction drills during most every course of fire all week-end. I've been burning the remains of this case up for casual plinking, and this rifle didn't care for it one bit. But then I switched over to my own reloads, some nice 55gr. ball, and it ate sixty of those without a hiccup. Then it finished off the rest of the magazine of the frangible stuff without a problem. I guess that it just needed a bit of breaking-in before it could digest that junk.

But it shoots good, and I, Proud Hillbilly and JR each used it to shatter every sporting clay paced on the 50-yard berm. It looks to be a good shooter and it's a couple of pounds lighter than my old carbine that sports a heavy 14.5" machine gun barrel. (Back when I built that one, the 1993 Clinton Ban panic was in full swing, and you took what you could get and were grateful for it.)

Old School, meet New School.

So, four guns to the range, and a 50% satisfaction rate. But those two felt so good to shoot that I'm not even irked about the two that didn't...well almost.

Range Day

Got out to the range today to test-fire a couple of projects.

First off was my .300 Blackout AR with the 9" barrel and AAC 762SDN suppressor. I finally finished it out with a Blue Force Gear Vickers sling and an Aimpoint T2 micro red dot on a LaRue mount and this was the first time I got to take it out as a complete package and shoot it.

After throwing five sighters away because I was firing on one target but looking through my spotting scope at the adjacent one ("Where am I hitting? Why am I not even on paper?!"), I got this one dialed in for a fifty-yard zero and is seriously shoots minute-of-feral-cat now, and completely hearing-safe without plugs or muffs due to that can on the front. Still, it chaps me that I had to drop $400 in permission slips (tax stamps) to build the rifle this way--one for the short barrel and one for the suppressor. But I'm definitely happy with the finished product and that Vickers sling is well worth the $35.00 I dropped on it at the NRA convention. I think that I'l be getting more of those for other rifles, since I'm a big fan of the two-point sling in general and this one in particular.

Next gun out was the Smith and Wesson M&P 40, recently rebuilt with the Apex Tactical Duty Carry Action Enhancement Kit (DCAEK) that I purchased at the NRA convention after talking to the Apex people at their booth. I also changed it over to shoot .357 Sig rounds via a drop-in barrel purchased from Midway.

First challenge was installing the DCAEK parts. It took a while, and I'm done now, but I'll say up front that I'm not as fond of either Smith and Wesson or Apex Tactical as I once was.

First, my gripe against S&W:
I have never found a pistol that I've worked on to have so many tiny parts, including tiny parts not secured in place. (I'm hardly a Glock fanboi but Glock never would have built a pistol like this.) Right off the bat, I lost the little plastic disk that tops the striker safety plunger spring when it launched itself like a little Polaris missile as I drifted the rear sight off of it. I found it eventually, but said a few unkind things about S&W as I rooted around for it on the floor. But this was nothing compared with my anger over the sudden departure of the sear plunger, a microscopic piece of metal sitting atop a coiled spring beneath the sear. That one I did not find, and neither Smith and Wesson nor Apex stocks a replacement. Apex pretty much just shrugged and wished me luck finding another one, and Smith would not sell me one but offered to fix the pistol if I sent the whole thing back to them and paid a diagnostic fee plus the hourly repair charge. Screw both of them--I went back to Midway and bought a whole sear assembly for $23.00, basically just to get the plunger. Oh--and Apex tells you that you're getting a new sear spring with their kit, but then you don't, and when you check their website, they mention that they no longer provide that spring and you should either buy a new sear assembly or use your old one. Gee, thanks.

Then came the fun of reassembly. As if trying to get the trigger spring back onto the trigger pin isn't fun enough already due to the slightly-too-short slave pin that Apex gives you, you also have to make sure that the take-down lever retaining wire that just rests in a slot of the locking block doesn't fall out of position as you try to insert the locking block in the frame. Time spent on this exercise: Nearly three hours of cursing and looking for little dropped stuff before it finally all came together and worked. And really, S&W, did you have to use crummy roll pins to hold everything in the frame? You couldn't just use steel drift pins like Glock would have done?

The pistol is finally together, and I do like the new pull and reset on this trigger, but damn, they made me work for this.

But the pistol does shoot noticeably better now--or at least I shoot better with it--and the .357 Sig rounds definitely exhibit some authority as they head off downrange, shooting a bit flatter--and lower--than the .40 rounds but grouping nicely all the same. I am happy with the re-worked pistol but I'm not planning on doing my other M&P 40 any time soon. Not after this nightmare job.

A Great Gun Day. (NFA Fun.)

So I got out to the range yesterday to work on two pet projects of mine, the suppressed .300 Blackout short-barreled AR and the Reising SMG.

I'm now handloading rounds for the shorty AR, using Nosler 220 grain open tip bullets and 9.9 grains of Winchester 296 (Hodgdon 110). I took the first test rounds out to the range with my newish chronograph to see how they were running and also to compare them to some factory Remington ammo with a similar bullet.

My rounds all stayed nicely subsonic so I could shoot the rifle with no hearing protection. They chrono'd between 998feet per second and 1050fps, with one round out of the twenty test rounds hitting 1076, so I excluded that one from the eval. (It was still quiet though.) excluding the flier, my rounds showed a roughly fifty fps variation across the test group, which I wasn't really happy with until I tested the Remington rounds (R300AAC8) and found a 30fps variation between the ten test rounds I shot. The Remington ammo was advertised as having a velocity of 1050fps, but I noticed that it was shooting 960-990fps. The discrepancy can be explained by the fact that Remington uses a 16" barrel in their tests and my rifle sports a 9" barrel. The Remington hit precisely point of aim with my Mag-pul sights (I'd previously zeroed this rifle using that ammo) and my rounds all stuck just a bit high at 50 yards, confirming that mine are traveling a bit faster. I'll probably step the next batch of test rounds dow a tenth of a grain or two, just to get them mirroring the Remington, which I have a fair stockpile of. All in all, I'm happy with the results thus far.

And if you'll notice in the picture above, the magazines for this rifle are all marked for the .300 round. Hopefully, designating specific magazines exclusively for the .300 BLK round will act as a check to keep one of those rounds from being accidentally introduced into a 5.56mm AR and prevent the catastrophe which would surely follow. I also keep this rifle segregated from the others in 5.56 and stored seperately, again to minimize the possibility of an ammo exchange between the two types. It's been shown a few times now that a .300 round WILL chamber in a 5.56mm rifle and fire...once.

Then it was time to try the Reising out once again, because I haven't quite burned up my entire stock of .45 ammo trying to get this gun to run right.

For today's test, I'd tweaked the aftermarket Christie magazine's feed lips with ye olde trusty needlenose pliers and I'd replaced the magazine well housing with a new one ordered from Numerich Arms. Admittedly, in light of this gun's lack of performance on subsequent outings, I wasn't expecting a lot, so I was happily shocked to have it burn through the entire magazine in three bursts without a single hiccup or stoppage. Fantastic! The next two magazines also fired well, although I had the second round of each misfeed. I have a couple of thoughts on tweaking the magazine a bit more, and if it works the way that I think it will, I expect to finally have a light, accurate and reliable .45ACP submachine gun.

It was a great day out, and as an added bonus, I came home with 20 rounds of spent Norma 6.5 Carcano brass that some other shooter didn't bother to pick up. Since I have two Carcanos, that was a nice gift to me from whoever left it behind as well.

Feds retreat on proposed M855 Ammo ban

For once, the public servants listened when the public spoke in objection to something that they wanted to do.

ATF shelves controversial bullet ban proposal

They reportedly heard from 52 senators and 238 House members and over 80,000 citizens on this issue, and even law enforcement groups said that they didn't call for, approve of or see a need for this attempt to ban a fairly large percentage of the available cheap surplus ammunition for AR-15 rifles.

Of course the Justice Department will have the final say, but I doubt that Obama wants to see that decision made so close to his own desk. We all know that he hates gun owners and wants to get even with a group of people that he believes don't support him, but he likes to swipe at the citizens who he views as his enemies from behind the facade of the bureaucracy, and in this instance, the bureaucracy isn't willing to play ball and take the blame in the face of this populace outrage.

Take a look at the list of House and Senate members who weighed in on our behalf, and if yours are among the signatories, send them a nice thank you letter. And if yours are not...remember next November

A win for everyone, except Obama and the greedy speculators who sucked every round of this stuff off the market and have been trying to flip it at a dollar a round or more.

Note to WV voters: Senator Shelley Moore Capito signed the letter, as did Representative Alex Mooney.
Senator Joe Manchin, the guy who ran as "pro-gun", did not.

M855 Arrives.

Over the last couple of weeks, the blogosphere and internet gun forms in general have been abuzz with outrage over the Obama Administration suddenly deciding that M855 62gr. 5.56mm ball ammunition is suddenly "armor-piercing" for the purpose of a ban on further production or sale of this great low-cost target-shooting round, allegedly because it has no "suitable sporting purpose".

BATFE Ammo Ban ALERT

Hey--if you can't take the guns away from the American citizens, you take their ammo, right?

Well I was immune from the panic for a bit, until I noticed that supplier after supplier of this ammo, that was cheap and plentiful until the buzz started, was disappearing faster than the words "radical Muslim" from an Obama speech. I then casually checked my own ammo locker and realized that I didn't actually have but a couple hundred rounds of this stuff as I tend to stick to either 55gr. ball for 5.56 or .30 rounds, a different animal entirely. So, not wanting to be the only kid on the block without any M855, because even I have my sheep-like "follower" moments, I snarfed up a few of the last-remaining cans being offered at "normal" prices. (Yes, Mom...if all my internet friends jumped off a bridge tomorrow--or moved to Texas and started a secession movement--I'd jump/move too.)

So here's what the UPS fairy brought me. 1260rds of green-tip Lake City on strippers.

And for those of you who would like to weigh in on this proposed ban before it's enacted, BATFE has an open comment period and citizens can write in with their thoughts on this by following the instructions in this NRA-ILA alert.

Just please, for the love of God, follow the advice of the Great Tam and do not send in some obscenity-filled, poorly-spelled rant that makes you (and the rest of us) look like some sort of retarded Ron Paul follower. That's not exactly persuasive and it doesn't help our side.

Spud to the Range for Machine Gun Fun!

So what does one do with a nephew visiting from out of town? Why, you you take him shooting, of course.

Here he is trying out the .300 AAC shorty with full-powered rounds and no suppressor.

And here he is shooting it suppressed.

(And yeah...I belatedly caught the lack of safety glasses here and we had a discussion about that.)

Then we moved on to bigger things. Hell, he's been good enough to earn some trigger time on "the Pig".

After that, we put a box of sporting clays down on the 50-yard berm and went "Dueling .22 rifles" on them until they were gone. Here he is with my M&P-15 .22lr. (And yeah, he's got a muddy ass. Boys are supposed to get muddy...even this one.)

And since this is real shooting and not "Call of Duty", he learned some shooting positions today, both prone (above) and sitting (below).

He did great. No clays survived.

Then it was time to try some pistol shooting on the steel plates with the Browning Hi-Power.

He got off to a bit of a slow start here, but surprisingly, as soon as he started listening to what I was telling him about stance, grip, sights and trigger, the plates started dropping like clockwork. Funny how that works, isn't it?

We spent a few hours out there, and he was safe and followed directions. My only real complaint is that when it comes to policing brass, he's the slowest brass-picker-upper I've ever seen. But we can work on that. As far as shooting goes, I'm proud of him.

A day at the bench. Loading the .300 AAC round.

Since my stress-fractured foot (the real one, not the store-bought one) is still giving me grief today, I just spent the day with an old pal down the basement, my RCBS Rockchucker press.

Take 300 5.56mm shell casings. Trim them down to roughly 1.370" and re-size in a .300 AAC die. Final trim and chamfer the case mouth and confirm case is 1.368" or thereabouts. Prime the cases and charge them with 16.5 grains of Hodgdon's H110 and seat a pulled 7.62mm 147gr. FMJ ball to an overall cartridge length of 2.10". Presto! new .300 AAC plinking rounds. I just did 300 of them this afternoon.*

Happy.

And the .300 twins here have fodder for a few more practice sessions at the range.

* Lawyerly disclaimer: This load works for me in MY rifles. It is not represented as safe for YOUR rifle. Consult current reloading manuals before attempting to duplicate.

Off to the Range

So because Keads built a new AR, and because Tam took hers out to shoot, I decided that I'd take mine out to the range and burn off some of the last of the miserable frangible rounds that I'd been blessed with for the recent Ron Avery/Keith Garcia class.

Day1
Day 2
AAR

I set up on the 400M line at our range and fired for effect at the steel target down by the berm, but alas, with the frangible stuff, you get no "CLANG!" feedback like you do with regular ammo; the projectile just disintegrates on impact, and all you can do it watch the area around the target. If you see a dust cloud from the berm, it means "miss", and if you see no dust, that's probably a hit on the steel.

I hit for the most part, thanks to Saint ACOG, but I had just enough misses to confirm my theory about the dust clouds down range. I'll be glad when this ammo's gone as it was mis-feeding even here on the static range once the rifle got hot.

After playing here for a bit, I went over to the pistol line to try out my newest acquisition.

To be fair, I didn't really want or need this pistol, but one day Aaron of The Shekel calls me up all excited.
"Hey, (name redacted to avoid embarrassing them) has slightly used M&P 40s for $299. You need to get one quick!"

"But I don't need another .40," I told him. "And besides, I'm broke and about to go on vacation."

"But all the cool kids have these," he insisted. "You're like the only one who doesn't. Besides, that's why we have credit cards."

And so because I'm a shameless lemming when it comes to buying guns, I ordered one of these from (name redacted to avoid embarrassing them), only to have them ship it to the wrong customer, some dealer out in New Mexico. Now I do like this wholesaler, and this is the first time I've ever had a problem with them, so I'm willing to accept that mistakes happen just so long as they make it right, which they did. Of course by that time, I was gone on my trip, and when I came back, the dealer that I ordered it through had fallen out with the staff at the range where he did business and was now barred from the property, causing me even more hassle and delay before I finally got this pistol in my hands. But it was worth it, because what came was a pistol that was so lightly used as to be virtually unfired. There was no wear on the feed ramp or the barrel's finish, and the mainspring still had plenty of the blue grease that you typically see only from the factory. An oily cleaning patch run through the barrel came out almost spotless, so I'm figuring that this "used" pistol was never actually issued to anyone, or if it was, it wasn't carried or shot. There's not a mark on the exterior anywhere, either, although it is old enough that it's night sights are about done.

So I shot it in today. I'd brought 150 rounds to give it a decent workout despite only having one magazine and no holster for it, but the pistol line was filled with two families and their kids, and the kids were all firing full-sized rifles from the tables so the rest of us pistol shooters were stuck just putting our targets out at 25 yards and remaining behind the tables as well. Shooting like this got a bit dull, so after firing 50 rounds, I called it a day. But the pistol fired flawlessly and shot a nice group, albeit a bit high on the target. As this pistol is new to me, I'm willing to accept that I'm to blame for the uniformly high hits. They were still almost all A-Zone hits, but not quite where I wanted them so I'll bring it back and work with it more when the range isn't stacked to capacity with other shooters. I do like it though, except for a rather muddy trigger reset. I think I'll keep it and probably even learn to like it.

Now it's showing a bit of wear.

All said and done, I'm happy.

M-16/AR-15 Lubrication Guide

While getting ready for a fast-approaching class, I found this nifty chart for M-16 and AR-15 lubrication over at ar15.com and for lack of a more original post, I figured I'd share it with those of you who own and shoot these rifles. I suspect that there are a few among my dozen or so readers.

Ready to rock on this end. But then again, every firearms owner always cleans and properly lubricates his or her weapon after every shooting session or every six months without use, right?

Range Day--Getting Ready

I have a rifle class coming up soon. And because I don't want to look like a donkey any more than I have to, I spent this afternoon making sure that my rifle is zeroed perfectly, both with it's iron sights and the two different optic units that I'll be bringing with my.

The rifle:

My Bushmaster carbine, with an A.R.M.S. #40 BUIS (Back Up Iron Sight) and a Grip-pod forward vertical grip that's also a bi-pod. (This is one of the coolest AR accessories out there, folks. If you don't have one, get one.)

The optics:

An Aimpoint Comp ML4 zero-magnification red-dot on a LaRue quick-detach tactical mount.

And a Trijicon ACOG 4x scope, also on a LaRue QD mount.

One hundred rounds and a box of orange sporting clays later, I'm confident that this rifle is as zeroed as it's going to get and perfectly capable of making accurate shots sufficient to hit any target this class has us shoot at, providing that I do my part, of course. (There's always that bit, isn't there?) Now I've just got to detail clean and lubricate it and send it and it's ammo and kit off to my wonderful host for the class. I may still come off looking like a donkey after this class, but at least it won't be because the rifle wasn't prepped and ready.

Note: Neither Bushmaster nor LaRue Tactical, Aimpoint, Trijicon, A.R.M.S or Grip Pod gave me anything to flog their stuff; I just own and use it because I really like it.