Gun Mon

Cute, huh? "Gun Mon...day." Get it? Okay, never mind...I'm tired. Besides, it's Tuesday, but I'm a day behind.

I thought I might actually talk a little about, you know, guns today. I got to spend some time at the range with a suppressed H-K MP7 in 4.6 X 30 buzzgun, courtesy of Long Mountain Outfitters and Fiocchi, who makes the ammo. It shoots like, well, a .22 submachinegun might...in fact, I kept wanted to overcompensate to keep the front end from rising, except that the front end didn't rise to speak of. It just buzzed away, the H-K suppressor doing a pretty good job of keeping the sound throttled down.

The whole Personal Defense Weapon (PDW) thing is pretty interesting...a sort of sub-sub gun that fills a role between handgun and an assault weapon. The uber-PDW, of course, is the FNH P90, another little buzzgun that shoots like, well, another .22 submachinegun (and available in semiauto civilian garb).

The whole issue on the little monsters revolves around whether their specialty cartridges — the 5.7 X 28 in the P90, the 4.6 X 30 in the H-K — will deliver the mail in a law enforcement or a civilian context...these cartridges are already proven quantities in military arena. But what you need in a military arena is not necessarily what Bob SWAT Guy, or you and I need. I have mixed feelings..I've talked to end users for both cartridges who were wildly enthusiastic on the terminal ballistics....but in every case the users had access to ammunition that you and I can't have and multiple hits were involved. A dozen of either of these little guys will certainly dent your mellow.

My problem is I have a nagging sense that ballistics may be ballistics...we're talking roughly 40 grain bullets at 2200-2400 fps...hummmmm...now where have I heard those numbers before? Maybe the .22 Hornet (46 grain at 2600-2800 fps)? Not known as a definitive manstopper.Yes, we're talking trick bullet design, something I've very fond of in handgun cartridges, but still...

From a civilian standpoint, I'd have to say the jury is still out. If any of the specialty cartridges gains a bit of a widespready following, we'll see a lot of ammo development in the civilian arena...then I'll change to an ultralight plastic pistol with about a billion rounds in each magazine...I'll get it in a designer color, too!

I also put several boxes of 9mm frangible ammo through a production line Sig Sauer P250. I think I'm going to stand by my original thoughts on the pistol...it does feel a lot like the P225, a gun I'm very familiar with, in my hand. The long DA trigger is still slick — smooth, but with more stacking at the end of trigger stroke than with the protos I shot at the factory. It is not a hard trigger to get used to, though it could benefit hugely from a shorter reset...for revolver shooters, that long DA stroke is baseline normal. As I said, I've heard mucho rumors that the 25os are not flying off the shelves, probably a function of the viciously competitive plastic pistol market that I guarantee will get even more competitive as we move through this election year.