The First Blog Post...

...from the New Secret Hidden Bunker! Solar electrical system working well...generator not yet on-line, but should be by the end of the week...water and septic systems on-line...dual propane hot water/under-floor heating systems on on-line...Internet obviously on-line...robotic defense systems armed...fallout shelter partially stocked...satellite teevee instal later this afternoon...nervous breakdown...pending...

Anticipate actual residency early next week!

Suspect wind generator component of the redundant/redundant power systems will go in sooner rather than later, depending on whether I have 2 nickels left to rub together.

All in all, it's pretty neat!

BTW, I really didn't explain why I thought the Ares Defense SCR was such an important product. Obviously, the AR-15 platform is overwhelming the most popular rifle in America. Realistically, at this point in the product cycle the vast majority of people who wanted to get into the AR system have already done so (and the other 6 of you ought to buy right now while the prices are low, low, low...my CDNN flyer for this week offered an incredible selection of ARs for prices I haven't seen in years.

There does, however, remain a portion of our market that has not bought into the system, largely because they don't like the way the ARs look. That's not particularly irrational...I'll wager ev ery one of us has purchased a firearm because we liked the way it looked. Inverse Q.E.D., there are firearms we don't purchase because we don't like the way they look. There are also for some people issues with the ARs pistol grip ergonomics...pistol grips work just great, but some shooters just despise them for their own personal ergonomics.

The SCR brings the AR-15 platform to that group of shooters/hunters. If you want the traditional ergonomics and the advantages of the most versatile rifle system on the planet, you can have it. Remember, we live in a "have it your way" universe. Ares has a wood stock in the works, and there already are a number of AR wood furniture sets (like these from Brownell's). I envision an SCR with wood furniture and maybe woodland green or gray Ceracote on the metal parts. Would make a sharp looking rifle! At least, not nearly as weird looking as a Rhino .357!

Walpurgis Night Warning!!!

.

Remember, tonight is Walpurgis Night, and even as I write the words the Minions of the Dark Lord are rising from their resting places in the Carpathian Mountains to ride the winds across an unsuspecting, sleeping world!

Me, I hang a bulb of garlic above each doorway, a definite evil undead repeller. Free advice to young people...if you're out and about tonight an a tres-hot member of the opposite sex (or same sex...we're 100% non gender specific here at the Bunker) invites you into a dark alley for "something really special," I'd take a pass if I were you unless you'd like your bloodless, soulless husk to be discovered in the cold grey dawn of May Day.

Still, witches be hot, as this 1880s painting from Luis Falero clearly indicates.

And speaking of AR-15s (the mark of a great writer, BTW, is to seamlessly flow from topic to topic without disturbing the reader's concentration),  listen to today's podcast, where I spend a lot of time on the Ares Defense SCR.

Home from NRA...

...in the wee wee hours of this morning!

You'll perhaps not be surprised to know I turned the 3 days of the NRA convention into days 5, 6 and 7 of the SHOT Show. A lot of meetings and several GREAT autograph signings at the OC booth and at Burris Optics. I also ended up doing a ton of interviews; I said that I was shocked...SHOCKED!...that there had been no "active shooter events" in a big room filled with 70,000 mostly armed people!

The BANE-A-PALOOZA event at the Slippery Noodle went off just super...I don't know how many people we ended up with, but it was well over a hundred. THANK YOU Forum members and pod people! It was great to meet so many of you, and I got a LOT of ideas to steal wholesale!

I was heartbroken that I didn't get to go play with with the "substantial" crowd of antigun Bloomberg shills...there were fully 100 of them...as many seats as there was on the bus that brought them in! Wow! Unfortunately, they were apparently members of the United Federation of Shills, Lowlifes and Bums, so they were unable to protest longer than the time it took to do the interviews with MSNBC.

Here's a few random data points, and I'll be talking about Indy on this week's podcast:

• It is clear from the convention especially that women are playing a much greater role in the business and the culture than ever before. Obviously, the demo still skews older, male and white, but with this convention the effects of Gun Culture Ver. 2.0 are beginning to show. Faster, please!

• Interestingly enough on the same subject, one of the most common things I was asked by those very same older,male,white demo guys was how can we do a better job of reaching out the both the African America and the Hispanic community. I was heartened to see that, overall, our culture seems outreach as a major TO-DO list item, and it's something I'll be working on as well.

• I am a little concerned on the NRA's slight drift away from a laser-focus on gun rights. I'm going to refer you to Charles C. W. Cooke's excellent piece on NRO, tagged "The NRA Is Winning:"

The NRA is winning — and thank goodness that it is. So effective has it been that it must be tempting for its acolytes to branch out, fighting the good fight on more front than one. It should resist the lure, and — even at this moment of unprecedented success — remember what it was that made it so effective in the first place: discipline.

BTW, Cooke was at the convention, obviously. I saw this same sort of drift duing the Bush The Younger years when we weren't in a DefCon One battle mode...I started getting calls from political folks that started like this: We know you're a gun activist, and that's why we think you should help us with [fill in the blank] issue. As a small "l" libertarian, I am very attuned to the depredations of our Constitutionally guaranteed liberties and the necessity to fight against those depredations. However, on a strictly pragmatic plane, movements typically can't be made to scale horizontally because of hugely differing depths of commitment on the other issues that might be tagged onto the primary issue.

I would say a large percentage of the gun culture — and an overwhelming percentage of our new shooters and hunters — fall more into my arena than the traditional GOP tent. While I will unconditionally agree with you on liberty issues, not only do a not agree with the mainstream GOP agenda, I think most of it is pure looney tunes. In the Bush years I found the big push was to draw gun rights advocates into GOP social issues. Not saying this is a huge issue yet, but it is something we need to be monitoring closely. 

• When any government bans guns based on essentially "cosmetic" issues, manufacturers will simply change said cosmetic issues and motor on. It is not a question of "getting around" the laws, but the simple fact that laws drafted by cretins seldom make sense. If any legislative body should decide to ban, say, Manolo Blahnik Jeweled Pumps in Deep Sky Blue" because they cause harm and suffering to women's ankles, it should not surprise said legislators when consumers snap up Manolo pumps in Passion Purple and Vampire Lick Red (okay, I made those colors up!). The Troy Pump Action AR, the Black Rain really weird stocked New York compliant AR (which, by the way, doesn't feel nearly as weird as it looks) and the stunning Ares Defense Sporting Configurable Rifle are evolution in action and intelligent responses to stupid laws.

• It was Big Fun! As always, I am humbled and honored to meet the people who make SHOOTING GALLERY, THE BEST DEFENSE, GUN STORIES WITH JOE MANTEGNA, DOWN RANGE Radio, DOWN RANGE Television and all our other projects possible. I cannot thank you all enough!

Trigger Pull on GP-100s

Found my Lyman electronic trigger pull gauge! On the out-of-the-box GP-100 Match Champion, the double action trigger is 7 pounds 1 ounces. The SA pull is 4 pounds 1 ounce. The Lyman gauge is kinda futzy and sensitive to how its held, and I did my best to eliminate the human error. By way of comparison, my custom GP-100 from Cylinder and Slide runs about 5 pounds, maybe an ounce or two more on the DA pull. The Match Champion has no grit and is very smooth...the C&S gun is...perfect.

The Match Champion has been both dry-fired and shot (all DA) A LOT, and the trigger pull has gotten better and better. The C&S gun is just back from the shop and doesn't have a round through it. I would anticipate the DA trigger pull "settling" in the mid-high 4 lb range by the time I get it to the IRCs.

Patriots' Day...

...if it doesn't ring a bell, look it up! Two hundred thirty nine years ago today the embattled farmers stood and fired the shots heard 'round the world. Today is also the anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Two shining beacons of freedom in a world growing steadily darker.

I spent today at a cowboy match. I shot pretty well, but slower than I'd like. Didn't miss any shots and was extremely consistent, but couldn't quite find overdrive. I was very pleased with my shotgun, however. I focus on "firing on reset," pulling the trigger for the second barrel on the Browning BSS as soon as the trigger resets. I don't think about moving the gun to the next target; rather, I just cut my eyes toward the second target and the gun does the rest. My speed has improved hugely, and I rarely miss a shotgun target anymore. Thank you, "Non Stop!"

Just picked up my GP-100 competition revolver completely overhauled by Cylinder & Slide...WOW! What an absolutely amazing job! I think I'm going to do a full feature on this revolver for DRTV. I'll get some pictures up on the blog tomorrow!

Hoof-beats in the Darkness!

So through the night rode Paul Revere;

And so through the night went his cry of alarm

 To every Middlesex village and farm,

— A cry of defiance and not of fear,

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door

And a word that shall echo forevermore!

For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,

Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The people will waken and listen to hear

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,

And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Paul Revere's Ride"

Two-hundred and thirty nine years ago tonight an express rider named Paul Revere raced to Lexington, MA, to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that British "Redcoats" were on the way to arrest them. Along the way, he "alarmed" the countryside, stopping at each house with the warning. Upon arriving at the house Adams and Hancock were using, a sentry warned him not to make so much noise.

"Noise?" said Revere. "You'll have noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out!"

These are the stories of America that we once all learned and honored. I still feel a shiver when I read Longfellow. The stories are no longer taught, although through groups like Appleseed they are passed along through an oral tradition as old as time.

I greatly fear we have have once again arrived on the eve of April 19, 1775. I hope I'm wrong, but tonight, when you close your eyes, listen for hoof-beats.

Wow! Where did the week go???

First up, for all you NRA'ers...

BANE-A-PALOOZA!

Yes, The Same Poor Bastard Is Buying The Beer!
Cosponsored by IDPA!!!
Meet Joyce Wilson!!! Be in AWE!

6:30-8:30 PM

Saturday, 26 April

The Slippery Noodle Inn

http://www.slipperynoodle.com

Indiana's Oldest Bar!

372 S. Meridian

Downtown Indianapolis

NOTE: The room only accommodates 100 people! Best I could do! Also, if you come AFTER 7PM, you MUST pay a $5 cover charge. If you can't afford this, have some one get me, Marshal,  or Marshal'ette, and we'll come make fun of you!

Appleseed Event at NRA!

The Face-off

On one side of the ring, 5 million NRA members, people who give their hard-earned money to an organization dedicated to protecting their rights.

On the other side, one nasty little fascist with a lot of money and his purchased woman mouthpiece (I'm not sure I'm remembering this correctly, but don't we have a word for that type person?).

Imagine if the Koch Brother decided they were going to dedicate their millions on some lame conservative social cause most Americans reject out of hand...do you think that the pathetic "newspaper of record" would be giving them the big ole wet kiss? Or would they be saying the same thing I am about Bloomberg's new hobby:

There is something profoundly un-American in one many with money trying to figure out ways to turn the rest of us into felons. Here's what it really is, from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

fas·cism

 noun \ˈfa-ˌshi-zəm also ˈfa-ˌsi-\

: a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government

This Is So Friggin' Cool!

Figuring out the value of pi using only a pump-action Mossberg and a sheet of aluminum foil. From the Physics arXiv blog

Imagine the following scenario. The end of civilisation has occurred, zombies have taken over the Earth and all access to modern technology has ended. The few survivors suddenly need to know the value of π and, being a mathematician, they turn to you. What do you do? 

If ever you find yourself in this situation, you’ll be glad of the work of Vincent Dumoulin and Félix Thouin at the Université de Montréal in Canada. These guys have worked out how to calculate an approximate value of π using the distribution of pellets from a Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun, which they assume would be widely available in the event of a zombie apocalypse.

Read the whole thing, and be ready! (Hat tip to GunFreeZone)

Happy Ides of April!

If you put on your thinking caps, you'll know what I was doing yesterday...pretty much the same thing everybody else in the country was doing, and, yes, ti ducked (I was going to edit this to, "it sucked," but I kinda like it the way it is...)! Perfect miserable, snowy, freezing cold day for it, too. The damned winter will never end.

Couple of relatively interesting datapoints on the AR front. There's Ares Defense's "featureless" AR, a conventionally styled rifle on the AR platform designed to be legal in all 50 states designed to use AR uppers on their proprietary lower/bolt carrier (via Guns.com):

And we mean all AR-15 upper receivers. This is not a bufferless .22 rifle. The SCR will be manufactured in 5.56 NATO/.223 Remington and 7.62x39mm and is compatible with standar AR-15 uppers. 

The SCR uses a modified bolt carrier with an extension that drops into a recoil tube inside the stock, similar to some semi-auto shotguns. The bolt carrier is proprietary but the bolt itself is standard. We will know more about the rifle when it is officially unveiled at the NRA Annual Meeting.

This is a gun I'm looking forward to seeing (and videoing) at NRA. Ares Defense has always been good on technological solutions (their belt-fed AR just so rocks!), so I have high hopes for the gun. I love it when someone sticks a thumb in the eye of brainless state legislatures.

There's a second thumb (via The Firearm Blog) that Troy Industries displayed at SHOT, an AR platform pump action rifle, called — duh! — the PAR. The upper, where the pump system resides, and the lower are proprietary, but it does use AR magazines.

Pump action ARs have been around for a while. I know DPMS made, or at least cataloged, one, and I handled a prototype from a different manufacturer back when the Clinton Ban was still in effect. It's not a bad idea for non-permissive/restricted states, although a better idea is for us to have long-term strategies to retake those states and return them to America.

Speaking of non-permissive environments projects, MPI Stocks tells me the lightweight fiberglass stock for the Browning BLR is almost competed. That should take close to a pound and a half off the gun.

CNN Money has noted what all of us already know...the black rifle bubble is ancient history:

Many rifle manufacturers ramped up production last year in response to the sales spike, said Rommel Dionisio, industry analyst for Wedbush Securities. But demand has since stagnated, he said, and there's now a glut of gun inventory.

SOOOOOOOOOOOO, an excellent time to buy an AR!

Planned "Waco 2 The Sequel" Placed On Hiatus

"Don’t expect the enemy to cooperate in the creation of your dream engagement." 

Rule 47 

Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries

Sigh...what could be worse than — FINALLY! —donning full battle rattle, firing up the APCs, putting real bullets in the machine gun magazines, slapping butt and getting all weepy over that endangered, embattled symbol of America, the Desert Tortoise, reveling in the dream of being the very first American Stoßtrupp to to put hot lead downrange in support of the New American Order, and — DARN IT! — before you can turn those First Amendment Zone-be-damned Tea Bagger pussies, political dinosaur ranchers, recidivist cowboys, BS militia poseurs and pathetic Bushie Constitution supporters into mass piles of cooling meat, you get the STAND DOWN!

Rare actual image of endangered Desert Tortoise

And not just your regular "Stand down," but the, "Turn your butts around and run don't walk back to the bases stand down!" And when you get back to the bases you discover to your horror that instead of doing the Will Of The Lightbringer to pluck the plucky Jurassic reptile from the The Big Sleep, it turns out you were apparently sent out to rain death on your  fellow citizen and not a few scrawny cows in support of another under-the-table "green energy" behind-the-Beltway land deal with...wait for it...wait for it...those rollicking Red Chinese and that poster boy for Washington sleaze, Harry Reid!  Cue the Benny Hill theme music!

In the midst of this Clown Show, I have a serious question...is there anyone out there who doubts for one single second that, given the green light, the Feds would have pulled the trigger? On their fellow American citizens? Over a perceived spat between cows and turtles?

Think about that.

Some Thoughts on the Ruger GP-100 Match Champion

As you guys know I've had one for a while and have out some rounds through it, but it was only this last week at GUNSITE that, between filming the ultra-slow motion videography for GUN STORIES Season 4, I had a chance to run it.

Also as you know, the Match Champion is a stainless steel 4.2 inch barreled .357 with really nice Hogue wood grips revolver, the newest addition in the venerable GP-100 line. That said, I've always been an S&W guy when it came to revolvers...more specifically, a big bore S&Ws...44 Specials, .44 Magnums, even the occasional 38-40 all rung my chimes. The .357 seemed...puny...although I certainly knew it wasn't. It just wasn't big.

So we're going to film the ICORE Revolver World Championships, a match I've shot in the past with a totally trick Apex Tactical 629 running .44 Specials. Not a gun to take me to the winner's circle (although I suspect that's a matter of skill as opposed to hardware...LOL!), but an absolute blast to shoot.

For this year I thought I'd do something I'd never done before...go Ruger. They're good friends as well as sponsors, and Ken Jorgensen knows revolver as well as any living human. I had a 6-inch GP-100, which I sent off to Cylinder & Slide. Right about when the Match Champion arrived. Synchronicity, I thought. I'd practice with the MC while the 6-inch gun was in the shop.

This week I've been shooting ARMSCOR 158-gr .38 Special FMJs. I did lots of different drills on steel, but what really caught my eye was yesterday at 25 yards. I did a couple of cylinders of warm-up, then decided to roll off a quick 6-shot group. Two inches high and 2 inches right for the Novak-sighted gun at 25 yards, but a 3-inch off-hand DA group, which I'll take every day of the week and even Saturday.

I moved back to 50 on 12 inch plates for a while, then shifted to movement drills at 25, 15 and 10 yards. Very pleased with the gun! Expect to be even more pleased with the C&S 6-inch.

Look! A Shooting Range!

Was at GUNSITE earlier this week doing the ultra-high-speed videography for GUN STORIES WITH JOE MANTEGNA, and I was able to carve out some time with the Ruger GP-100 Match Champion with live ammunition instead of dry-firing. So far, so good. Am actually looking forward the ICORE championships in June.

BTW, spent some time with the Sig Sauer 716 DMR...great rifle, but at 11 pounds without scope or mag, a heavy fellow. The version we have has a Kahles 6-24X and a LaRue quick detach mount, which adds a few more pounds. Good workout...

Happy Sunday!

Saturday Morning and NOT Shoveling Snow!

That's because we shoveled about a foot-and-a-half of concrete-heavy spring snow yesterday!

Sigh...

We're about a month out from moving to the new Secret Hidden Bunker, where there is exactly zero snow. Solar goes in next week, along with the rest of the water system. BTW, the well-cistern system cost about twice our worst case projections. Septic is in...propane systems in place and functioning. Haven't even addressed the workshop in the garage yet...my plan is to model it on Jerry Miculek's gun workshop. Jerry's is designed for production of a variety of ammunition...mine sort of grew up around my first Dillon progressive press.

RE: Yesterday's comments that SBR laws are stupid, as a matter of fact, they are! They don't actually make any sense, largely because they are nothing but the vemiform appendix of a larger, much more restrictive law. The 1934 Firearms Act as drafted applied to all handguns and any other firearm that could be concealed, short barreled rifles and shotguns. Except that a huge handgun regulatory scheme/ban was politically untenable and quickly disappeared. Nobody thought or cared that the rules strictly regulating the SBR and SBS remained on the books.

The laws are purely arbitrary. Even though both Marlin and Winchester cataloged 14- and 15- inch versions of their lever guns, the Feds chose a 16-inch barrel length for rifles. The 18-inch barrel length for shotguns was even more capricious...as we noted on GUN STORIES, the really definitive American firearm of the mid-19th and early 20th centuries was not the single action revolver or the lever action rifle, but the lowly double-barreled shotgun.

Unlike in England and on the Continent, where the double-barreled shotgun had evolved into works of art for the landed gentry, the shotgun in America was a proletarian tool, the most common gun on the western expansion and a useful tool in rural America. Most of these shotguns may have started out with Long Tom barrels, but with the exigencies of rural and frontier life, the barrels quickly yielded to the other indispensable tool of rural America, the hacksaw. [Admit it...cant you hear Joe Mantegna saying those words?] An the time of the passage of the 1934 Firearms Act, there were quite literally tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of non-conforming shotguns in routine use in America. They're still turning up in closets, back rooms and forearms collections, often to the detriment of the finders.

So the 1934 Firearms act became the perfect prototype for future gun controllers — it criminalized perfectly legal common weapons that had been in use for decades; the legal standards were purely arbitrary (trust me, there's no difference in the lethality of a 17 3/4-inch shotgun barrel versus an 18-inch barrel), and penalties for violation were draconian. Oh yeah, and law accomplished exactly...wait for it...wait for it...nothing. Plus, it kept all those "Revenue Agents" put out of business by the repeal of Prohibition working at something equally worthless.

And don't even get me started on suppressors!

Since the arrival of the Thompson Center Contender in the 1960s (and the subsequent 1990s Supreme Court decision), the spectacular success of the .410 pistol platform and the rise of the AR and AK pistol platforms, the water is even murkier than before. Keep in mind the Supreme Court ruling on T/C...possession of parts that can be assembled into an illegal configuration is legal if the parts can also be assembled into a legal configuration. By my reading, that means if you have a pistol AR upper, you must have the parts to assembled a legal pistol (e.g., a lower that has been or can be assembled as a pistol). DO NOT have a pistol upper and no pistol lower! Just like no folding Contender/Encore stock unless you are also in possession of a rifle-length barrel.

The intelligent thing to do, of course, is to remove the appendix. Not gonna happen, though.

ATF Verifies Green Light for Sig Arm Brace

From Gear Scout:

Sig Sauer just shared a letter sent to a police department from the ATF’s Firearms Technology Branch concerning the use of arm braces that referenced Sig’s own SB15 pistol stabilizing brace for AR pistols specifically. 

The ATF’s letter says that they’ve determined that firing a pistol from the shoulder would not cause the pistol to be reclassified as an SBR. The letter, signed by the Chief of the ATF’s Firearms Technology Branch, Earl Griffith, states, “the firing of a weapon from a particular position, such as placing the receiver extension of an AR-15 type pistol on the user’s shoulder, does not change the classification of a weapon.”

Gear Scout has a copy of the letter. Key point here, "...the firing of a weapon from a particular position, such as placing the receiver extension of an AR-15 type pistol on the user’s shoulder, does not change the classification of a weapon.” How you use the AR-style pistol does not (and by my reading cannot) change the classification of the firearm as a pistol and not an SBR.

The reason I bring this up is that on a private email list this very question came up recently, to wit, if you shoulder the buffer tube of a pistol does it change the classification of the firearm. In fact, an AR manufacturer had stated that they had been informed (verbally) by ATF that using a pistol off the shoulder changed the classification. This letter clearly negates that claim. At least for right now, the the letter states that the physical characteristics define whether a firearm is a rifle, pistol or short-barreled rifle, not how the firearm is used:

FTB classifies weapons based on their physical design characteristics. While the usage/functionality of the weapon does influence the intended design, it is not the sole criteria for determining the classification of a weapon. Generally speaking, we do not classify weapons based on how an individual uses a weapon.

Let Our Heroes Defend Themselves!

GUN FREE ZONES KILL!

We need to end this insanity and let our soldiers defend themselves. Once again, the piece of human garbage with the gun killed himself when faced with an armed response. We know what to do, but instead the whores in the MSM will spend the next 2 weeks deeply analyzing the motives, the sensitivities, the childhood, the friends, the underwear of the shooter...just what he wanted!

Texas, the Dark Continent!

Yes, I was more off-grid in southwest Texas than in Africa! No cell...not enough Internet to upload the podcast (SORRY!)...miles and miles from the nearest venison jerky stand...

Was there at the amazing FTW Ranch for a precision rifle class from the Sportsman's All-Weather All-Terrain Marksmanship class...as instructor Doug Prichard, retired SEAL and sniper instructor, said, "Eight and a half weeks of sniper school crammed into 4 days."

We were there to wring out the Ruger SR762 and the brand new Burris XTR-II 4-20X mil-dot scope in harsh, real world conditions, from 100 out to 1000 yards.

I'll write a long post tomorrow, but lemme say this...the staff at FTW are among the finest instructors I've every worked with...they were just wonderful.

The guns were out of the box with...challenging...triggers; the scopes the first in the country.

And how did it go? Well, the last drill of the four day class consisted of 10 12-inch plates scattered across the hills and canyons of the 12,000 acre ranch...cross-canyon shots, steep angle shots, awkward shots of all kinds. Distances varied from the "close" plate of 363 yards to the far plate of 750 yards. The drill was simple...you got 3 shots at each plate. A spotter gave us wind direction and speed in MPH, and we did the mil conversions.

I got all 10 plates -- 4 on the first shot; 5 on the second shot; 1 (at 600 yards) on the third shot. I could have wept when the spotter called the 750-yard plate! 

More later...it's airplane time!