Wasn’t the $75 Glock 19 magazines.
It wasn’t the $2300 DoubleStar AR
It wasn’t the $2800 DPMS Sportical 223
It wasn’t the $750 SKS
It certainly wasn’t the $3300 M&P15
Nope. My favorite part of the gun show today was the $800 Nagant, next to the $600 10/22.
My Buckmaster is a super accurate little .22 pistol, and I thought it was great out of the box except for really one thing: the sights. They’re your standard black on black adjustable pistol sights. The rear sight is metal and has both windage and elevation adjustment screws, which is nice, but the front is just a chunk of black plastic. I knew there were fiber optic sights out there, and I figured that they would be the best for a target pistol. I settled on the Williams FireSights. The primary reason was because they sell a kit to replace both the front and back sights with fiber sights instead of just the front blade.
The sights come with a very small instruction sheet… and that’s it. Honestly, that’s fine since the installation of the sights are mostly “remove old ones, install new ones.” There is one extremely aggravating part, though. The new rear sight does not include the elevation spring or the detent pin, which means you have to remove them from the old one and install them on the new one. They recommend using a “small punch.” By small, they mean tiny. I ended up resorting to a paperclip… which was almost too big. Then came the job of prying out the tiny spring without it going sproing and disappearing forever, and installing it in the new sight with similar issues. Because of this, I would say that it completely fails Erin Palette‘s “so easy, her grandmother could install it” test. It’s not necessarily a job to be relegated to a gunsmith, but if you don’t have good fine motor control, you’re going to have issues.
After installation, I could tell that this would improve things right away. It’s much easier to line up the three dots (red for the front post, green for the two points on the rear. Of course, this was in my house at night, so it was difficult to tell how it would really work on the range.
That was a couple months ago, and I’ve taken it to the range a couple times since then. I can tell you that the sights are a huge improvement. What surprised me was that they’re wonderful during our normal late fall/early winter weather (read: cloudy to the point that you start to forget what the sun looks like). In truly bright light, the dots are easily visible but I don’t think they’re much better than painted dots. In the dark, there’s not enough light for them to really do their job. On a cloudy afternoon, they positively glow.
Bottom line is I would recommend these sights to anyone that’s wanting to put together a precision target pistol. They are kind of a pain in the ass to install because of the rear sight, but it’s worth it. The front post is still plastic, so I’m not sure how it would handle abuse, but for a range gun, it’s worth the $45.
Frangible and tracer is all the 5.56 they had. Even .22lr was bare. But if you want to stock up on 6.8SPC, they have plenty of that. Kinda makes me want to get one.
Yo work with what you have.
So, with very little surprise, Sen. Feinstein has decided to introduce a new “assault weapons ban.” The short of it is that it’s like the old one, except a gun needs to only have one of the evil features instead of two, bayonet lugs and flash suppressors are not longer evil, but thumb-hole stocks are.
So… say you want to build a semi-auto version of the rifles that are used for target shooting in the Olympics? Nope… sorry. That would be illegal.
Here‘s a link to a company that specializes in high-end target rifles like they use in the Olympics. Notice anything about these rifles? Just about all of them either sport a pistol grip or a thumb-hole stock. The few that don’t have semi-pistol grips where the bend in the grip is so severe that it makes little difference. They pretty much all also include adjustable butt-stocks that could run afoul of the “collapsable butt-stock” feature, since the type that you see on an M-4 is considered collapsible.
These features have not become popular because people like shooting from the hip or shoving full-sized rifles in coats as the anti-gun folks would lead you to believe, but because they make using the rifles more comfortable and more accurate. I know I’m preaching to the choir on this blog, but this information is the kind of ammunition we need to fight this stuff. There’s lots of folks out there that don’t know about guns and the best way we can fight the anti’s is by going down lists and showing why, point by point, this sort of stuff is stupid.
I get what he’s trying to do, but this is idiotic.
I mean, what’s he going to do? Scream at the guy?
One of the common things that some of my left leaning friends bring up when ever their talking about “reasonable” gun laws is that they think there should be a mandatory psych exam before you can own/carry a firearm. I understand their reasoning, and, in a perfect world, it would be a decent idea. Of course, in a perfect world, there would be no need to carry firearms for defense because we all would be too busy laughing, dancing, and playing all day.
During one of these conversations, I randomly flashed on a short story I had to read in middle school. I’m sure my English teacher would be shocked to learn that I was actually paying attention. Unfortunately, I’m horrible remembering things like names, so I long since forgot the name of the author and the title of the short story. Thanks to the power of the internet, I was able to track it down and even find an online copy of it here.
The story is of a man that has a car wreck. The accident results in the death of the protagonist (Robert Proctor) and most certainly his mother, at least one other driver, and a small girl that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Except it doesn’t. He wakes up to find that he’s been hypnotized as part of his driver’s test. He’s told that if he still wants a license, to sign on the dotted line. Reassured that it was all a dream, he signs and is promptly declared a crazy person and drug off.
I can see psychologists quickly deciding that anyone that has a desire to own a firearm wishes to use said firearm, and therefore wishes to kill someone. I know I’ve been the target of some rather pointed questions when a psycologist learned that I owned guns, like collecting knives, and practiced a martial arts. People need to remember that a psychologist’s opinion is just that: the opinion of one person. Not only that, but a person that has been trained to look for problems and see symbolism and deeper meaning in everything. Whether there actually is anything or not.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
Here’s the slightly misleading headline:
Man banned from Stones River Mall for offensive t-shirt
That offensive t-shirt read “Has your gun killed a kindergartner today?”
He was asked to remove the shirt, turn it inside out, or leave. He chose to do none of those things, and was arrested. Bryce Myszka is a pretty unique name, so I googled him.
The first thing that caught my attention was a dismissal order in his lawsuit against some jailers in Rutherford County. That order doesn’t say why he was in jail, and I haven’t nailed that down yet, but the Tennessee Inmate Locator says he’s a convicted felon who’s been out of prison since May of 2008.
I love being called a murderer for engaging in lawful activity by someone who’s already been to prison.
Gun auctions can be dangerous things.
If you need me, I’ll be in the dog house.