The Grinding Long March to 2017

With Santa in the rear view mirror, I'm spending most of this week doing a whole lot of nothing, which means finishing up a couple of projects that have cluttered my desk for months. Yesterday I worked toward finishing off the Dead Foot Arms/Quarter Circle 10 9mm/Glock magazines AR project. I'll finish it off this morning and put some rounds through it this afternoon. To be fair to me, this gun will be featured on the last SHOOTING GALLERY episode, which I cleverly put off until after the SHOT Show…I simply ran out of hours. Our 9mm AR show will feature this build, the super Angstadt Arms pistol (Glock mags) with the Shockwave Brace, the CMMG 9mm carbine (Colt mags), which has been built into a 3-Gun "trainer," my super accurate JP 9mm rifle (Glock mags) and my current fav favorite X95 in 9mm (Colt mags).

The reason I decided to dedicate an entire episode to the 9mm ARs is that I see this as an important rising niche for a bunch of reasons:

• Easy of shooting…like running a stapler
• Ammo costs
• Ability to train on pistol ranges

These 3 points taken together make the 9mm carbine/pistol a powerful tool for training, whether your "mission" for your primary AR(s) is self-defense or competition. I think the training aspect is very important…it seems that everyone has an AR, and I think the more training the better. Most of the high-end trainers I deal with welcome pistol caliber carbines in their classes. I fully expect to see pistol caliber carbine-specific classes, say for indoor or caliber-restrained ranges.

But wait! There's more!

• As a self-defense tool…the 9mm carbines and even the pistols are extremely easy to shoot, moreso than a handgun. Given the tremendous improvement in 9mm ammo, the reason the FBI and a flood of police agencies have gone back to the 9, a light, easy-to-shoot carbine/pistol without the ear-shattering noise and blast of the 5.56, loaded with 30+ rounds of, say, Corbon DPX, Hornady Critical Duty/Defense, or the new FBI load, the Speer Gold Dot G2s…tell me that's not effective for home defense.
• Competition…USPSA's Pistol Caliber Carbine class is a huge success, and I'm seeing carbine-style matches popping up all over. At the NRA Show, I reached out to Project Appleseed and urged them to change their national rules to allow 9mm carbines (right now, the rule is that rifles must be .22-8mm, .32, caliber; the last Appleseed I attended, I asked that since I already has a "Rifleman" patch, could I use my 9mm carbine? They said, "Of course." I shot the 3 highest scores of the day with the JP).

I haven't yet waded into the whole SBR issue. You can ready my (apparently endless) comments on the subject here. There additional issues in the comments, too.

I originally planned to include the other 9mm carbine platforms — the Sig Sauer MPX, the newest MP-5 clones, the CZ EVO, etc., but, as usual, I ran out of room. Maybe in a later episode, or on SGO. I got my first 9mm pistol I think a decade ago as a gift from Spike's Tactical. That gun has hundreds of rounds through it, is accurate and has never failed! I wish I could say that about all my guns!

On a totally different note, CJ wrote this comment on my last post on the Ruger Predator 6.5 Creedmoor:

Isn't the Predator a "hunting rifle"? One and a half inch groups at 100 yards with a hunting rifle seems perfectly adequate. No reason not to attempt better results, just as long as you understand you're trying to get Mclaren performance from a standard Ford motor.

 CJ, of course you're right. An inch-and-a-half at 100 yards is perfectly acceptable for hunting purposes. An inch is even better. If I got 2 inches at 100 off my pre-'64 Winchester 30-30, I would jump up and bark like a seal. I tend to bring high standards to a gun, especially a gun that I am going to use "in the field," either for hunting or self-defense. I believe we are in a golden age of firearms…modern firearms are just DAMN GOOD. I remember my father bragging to everyone that he finally created a reload that got him 1-inch groups at 100 yards from his Sako .264 Winchester Magnum, a round so hot that it would actually cook the little Tennessee whitetails as well as kill them. Nowadays, the idea of an MOA at 100 is the ante.

So I apologize…I believe I can get down to 3/4-inch at 100, and with a little luck down to the half-inch I want to see. But the rifle is fine as it is.