Thursday, December 26, 2013

Happy Boxing Day!

I'm sitting around this morning watching LOTR, as I do this time every year, hoping for some scrap of inspiration for the new year to face whatever edicts slime out of Mordor-On-The Potomac or the Wolf's Lair in New York. Tomorrow my Sweetie and I are going to visit the new Secret Hidden Bunker, which is being forged deep beneath the ground by dwarves. We're excited...am hopeful of finding a wizard or 2 to cast some spells of protection and high Nielsen ratings.

I wanted to catch up on a couple of things this morning. The new little Glock 4 has been outed on the Boomershooter Forum:


It appears to be a single stack .380, a bit smaller than the G26 9mm in most dimensions (5.94 inches in length for the .380; 6.41 inches in length; 4.13 for the height; 4.17 for the G26). Of course the real difference, of course (aside from 9mm vs. .380) is the width...the porky little G26 is 1.26 wide. The new .380 is only .836 wide, approaching my ideal dimension of .75 inch. The size is closer of a Kahr CW9 9mm or the Ruger LC9 than the current generation of .380s, making it — if the leak is correct and not a false flag — more along the lines of the Ruger LC380.

I would suspect a 9mm will follow pretty quickly. I'm surprised a 9mm wasn't the first offering, since the .380 gold rush seems to have given way to the mini-9s. No doubt Glock will sell a zillion of them. You note I don't mention pining away for mini-40s...that's because I think they suck.

Amazingly, read Time Magazine's latest cover story (part of it on the website is behind the subscription firewall): America's Pest Problem—It's Time To Cull the Herd:
Too many deer, wild pigs, raccoons and beavers can be almost as bad for the animals as too few. This is why communities across the country find themselves forced to grapple with a conundrum. The same environmental sensitivity that brought Bambi back from the brink over the last century now makes it painfully controversial to do what experts say must be done: a bunch of these critters need to be killed.
Yes kiddies, it's a very pro-hunting article where you'd least expect it. It comes at a time when anti-hunting forces are ramping up, aiming for the "weakest link" after the antigun mega-fail this last year. Paul Erhardt and I have been talking for the last couple of months about the new convergence of hunters and shooters. After more than 20 years of diverging (which, I'd like to add, Erhardt and I were the first to point out and document), shooters are moving from competition and training to hunting, and, in fact, see the 2 activities as one in the same. This is being driven by Gun Culture Ver. 2.0, who came into the gun culture through shooting, as opposed to the generational transfer through hunting that was common in Gun Culture Ver. 1.0 (I'd also like to point out that Erhardt and I were the first to identify and quantify Gun Culture Ver. 2.0).

Last week while filming SHOOTING GALLERY I outlined 3 additional trends that were all intertwined with the profound shift on hunting:
  • Feral hog hunting, which has given the hunting industry a massive shot in the arm.
  • Returning veterans, who are helping reshape Gun Culture.
  • The rise of (and final ascendency) of the AR-15 as a hunting platform.
I could have added the "localvore" phenomenon, which is huge here in the People's Republic of Colorado. There are a lot of implications for all of us in the industry with this market shift






12 comments:

Anonymous said...

While a member of GC v2.0, I am old enough to be part of GC v1.0. I shot my first game animal this year (wild hog) with an AR-15. The meat went to my friends. I also got my second game animal in the same week (Bambi). But I used my Honda Element at 60 mph.

Bill in CENTEX

Sheepdog1968 said...

I know by the very name, the new secret bunker is secret. I would be curious to learn what you have done, changed from the first one from a self defense perspective. One building material I've always been interested in is the insulated concrete foam. You can get the walls quite thick with concrete which is gotta be good at stopping bullets. Did you look into it?

For Christmas I got a book Norm Abrams wrote when he built his home. I've read quite a bit. It's a good read. Also reading a Bill Bryson book about a year in the 1920s that is a good fun read.

Jason K said...

What do you not like about the small .40's? I'm considering one after seeing that .40 was far more available than 9mm in the recent ammo crunch.

Kevin Creighton said...

I first poo-poo'd the new Glock .42 as a failed LCP, but Richard Johnson's excellent analysis got me a-thinkin'.

If you were going to design a CCW gun for the recoil-adverse new shooter, how would it differ from the Glock 42?

I love the Shield I have on my hip right now, but it's not a beginner's gun. The size is right, but it's on the wrong end of the 3 Laws of Motion to be a good beginning gun.

Take the same gun, drop it down to .380, mix in Glock's vaunted reliability and wrap it up with Glock's popularity with the cops, and you have a gun that's an easy sell to women and new shooters.

Glock might just have something here.

ExurbanKevin said...

As for .40 in a small gun, given that the recoil of 4 0s, (in the words of Thomas Hobbes), "nasty, brutish and short", IMO, you're giving up too much controllability and fast second shot capability in return for a marginal about of bullet weight and size.

Overload in Colorado said...

Which listed width is correct? .836" or .94"? What's the difference?

Michael Bane said...

Overload...I'm going off the BoomerShooter spec sheet.

Bill, my beloved Honda Element has bagged 2 (count 'em!) mules...much to the detriment of the Element!

Jason K., I agree with Kevin...the mini .40s are nasty little monsters.My split times are much worse on a mini .40 than the 9mms, and I'm a believer in "more rounds on target is better." I don;t think the difference between the 9mms and .40s in terminal performance warrants the difficulty in shooting them.

Kevin, I agree 100%...same discussion as the Ruger LC380 vs. the LC9...my Galloway-tuned LC9 still barks, whereas the LC380 is a sweetheart...in fact, I bought my T&E LC380, which I'll have overhauled for my Sweetie. I shoot the tuned LC9 better than even the Solo, the Sig 938 or the Kahr. We all should probably make a point that:

1) The smaller a gun is, the harder it is to shoot.
2) The more powerful a small gun is, the harder it is to shoot.

I have a .454 Casull Ruger Alaskan that, as I've said before, could make God flinch.

mb

Jason K said...

Kevin & Michael: Thanks for the info. I think I'll still get one, if only for the ammo availibility and the number of used ones available (kinda like all those used .44 Magnums in the 1970's).

....besides, "nasty, brutish, & short" has sometimes been used to describe me, too....

kmitch200 said...

What's the difference?

.83 looks like the slide width.
The .94" looks like it includes the slide stop width.

Anonymous said...

The Glock 42 WILL be the gun that Springfield Armory's 3.3" XD-S (9mm and .45 ACP) could have been had it not been subject to a recall for "unintentional discharge". I was actually going to buy the .45' version too. I'm glad that I held-off!

I'll wait for the 9mm/single-column version of the Glock though. Not that .380 isn't OK, I just don't want to stock any more ammo calibers than I have to.

Life Member

George said...

Michael,
With Ruger's LC380 and apparently Glock's model 42, where does the Ruger LCP fit? Does the LCP still make sense for a carry gun? And for whom?

Thanks!
George

Ted Murphy said...

Will this alleged .380 be made in the US? I know the other .380 glocks cannot drum up the requisite number of import points to get into the US. This model, being smaller than the Glock 28, would fare worse with regards to import points.