Author: oddball

Somebody broke into the wrong apartment in the Antioch area of Nashville last night.  Broke in to find the occupants there, struggle ensued, shots fired, and that’s all she wrote for that particular goblin.

Oddly enough, a couple hours earlier, in a different part of town, I was talking to my Tai Chi instructor, and we both agreed that if you’re going to have a home defense gun, it should be on you.  You probably won’t have time to go get it when you need it.

Oh, and this story is a wonderful example of why, when I bought my house, I had to explain to both my parents “yes, I bought a house in Antioch.  No, not that part of Antioch.”

Well, I ended up not sleeping as much as I meant to at the scifi con.  For some reason, my body decided that I needed to get up at 8:30am both Saturday and Sunday, not caring that I was out partying until 3am Friday night and 5am Saturday.

Oh, and while I failed to catch any purple women (though the drinking and the kilt wearing was successful), something did follow me home on the drive back.  Pics to follow tomorrow when I hopefully has the brains.

…have fun. Wish I could have made it this year, since it’s only a few hours down the road. Instead, I will be having fun, to quote my coworker, “drinking heavily and chasing purple women while wearing a kilt.”

Just… uh… don’t tell Naienko.

…the next time my mom asks “where do you go that you think you’re going to need a gun?”

There was a drug deal that went bad that caused shots to be fired at the Sonic in the Bellevue area of Nashville.  For those of you not familiar with the area, Bellevue is a fairly quiet middle income area.  My dad had a house there when I was in high school, and my great aunt lives just down the road from where the shooting happened.

Link to the article here

So, I’m praying this actually exists.  I love my Utilikilts, but they are a bit pricey.  I own a mocker ($200) and a survival ($330).  They’re great construction, and worth the money, but not cheap.  5.11 is showing these at $60 a pop?  Yes, please.

Dear 5.11:

Please make these real, and I promise the sale of 2 42″ ones in black as fast as I can click the button.

It appears that the state of Tennessee has officially decided that I’m a responsible enough person to carry a firearm.

Or, at least, that’s what this little card I got in the mail says.

Got off the phone with Dana at Bersa.  She’s going to send me a new extractor under warranty.  I also went ahead and ordered a new slide stop for my Thunder 380.  Both should be here some time this week.

I managed to slip away to the range Saturday morning to try my new purchase.  It was a beautiful sunny day, but, oddly enough, the range wasn’t packed by the time I showed up.

The first thing I noticed was that the magazines were actually easy to load, at least until you got past the 10 round mark.  This is in stark contrast to my Springfield XDm, and, to a lesser extent, my Beretta Px4.  Both of those pistols make you thankful that you brought a speed loader with you after round 5 or 6.  Maybe there’s a reason the Bersa didn’t come with one while both Springfield and Beretta supply one with purchase of those two guns.

I ran 100 rounds through it at 5 yards, and 100 at 10 yards.  As should be expected, the pistol seemed to be more accurate than I am.  I was able to create decent ragged holes at 5 yards, and things got scattered at 10 yards.  Being completely subjective about it, I’d say it’s about as accurate as my Px4, which is pretty close to the same dimensions.  As expected, the single action was pretty accurate, while the double action, while smooth, is heavy enough that it can be difficult to keep things lined up while pulling the trigger.  The extra weight of it being all metal meant that the recoil is very manageable,  and I was able to re-acquire target quickly and easily.  The grip design that I noted in my previous post did feel better on the range than that of my Px4.

I do have to admit that I did have 2 failures.  I’m not sure, but I think both were due to the extractor not grabbing the case properly.  I failed to inspect the case of the first failure (somewhere around the 40 round count), but I did look at the second (rough at 160 round).  It looked like the case’s rim was a little thicker than other rounds.  I was shooting UMC bulk 9mm, which I’ve never shot before.  I don’t know at this point if I should blame the gun or the ammo, but I have read that Bersa had a bad batch of extractors in 2010, and I wonder if I got one that’s been sitting around.

Assuming I can get the extractor issue ironed out, I might just run it when I try my hand at IDPA instead of my Px4.