Category: Guns

Another one from the Bidet Shoot:

Oddball’s wedding birthday present:

Wally does good work.

H&K P7:

From the Bidet Shoot.

This past Friday, my friend James took me to a members-only range just north of town. I’d heard of the club before but never been.

I didn’t know until the night before that it had 100, 200 and 300 yard berms, with steel gongs at 200 and 300. The last time I was able to shoot at any distance greater than 100 yards was when I was in Basic Training 15 years ago, so I was pretty excited at the prospect.

I had several goals for the day:

• Further troubleshoot the accuracy problems I’ve been having with my M&P15-22.
• Sight in the Nikon P-223 I recently purchased
• Experiment with POI/POA shifts on my Rock River AR that I use the YHM Phantom on occasionally.
• Get some trigger time on my M&P9

It was a great day. Like 75 Degrees, in July, with a slight breeze and clear skies. There were a couple of other groups of shooters, but since we went during the week there was plenty of room. This particular range doesn’t have target stands; you have to bring your own. Luckily, I brought the ones oddball and I built a couple of years ago. The bright pink posterboard in the middle of the picture above is held up by one of those stands.

Note to self: When you bring the target stands, bring a staple gun.

Zeroing the Sweet .22 scope on the M&P15-22

I started off with trying to get the M&P15-22 zeroed. Again. For like the third time. I thought I had written about this before, but I can’t find any old posts on it so I must’ve just dreamed that. The short version is that I bought this scope and these rings and have been chasing accuracy problems ever since. I’ve blamed the shooter, the rings, and the ammo, and eliminated all those variables in my testing.

It’s been maddeningly frustrating to get within two MOA of zero–with groups of three fitting under a nickel at 50 yards–only to have the next group be off by 6-8 inches. I finally think I may have found the problem. While troubleshooting, James came over to check if my scope (now mounted in a PEPR) was mounted securely.

And the upper receiver flexed under light pressure. The plastic picatinny rail moved left and right a few degrees. That ended the range time with that particular weapon 😀

Apparently I am not the only person to experience this. There also seem to be significant variations in POI based on temperature.

So I’ll be buying a 10/22 for Appleseed, and a red dot for the M&P15-22

Sighting in the Nikon P-223

The ghost image I talked about in my earlier post is still an issue for me. It’s not insurmountable, but it’s not going to stop me from looking for an alternative. I sighted in at 50 yards, knowing that an AR zeroed at 50 will be accurate at 200. With that knowledge and Nikon’s SpotOn iPhone app (that James had previously installed) I was banging the 300 yard gong pretty quickly.

Man, I love steel targets.

Other Stuff

James is going to be a bad influence on me. That’s a Remington 700 AAC-SD in .308. It’s basically the exact rifle I’ve been trying to talk myself into buying since they came out. The good news is that the trigger isn’t as good as I expected, so I can put that off some more.

The bad news is that he brought several lowers, each of which had a Geissele SSA-E. Now I have to buy one, especially after going from my rifle, to his, then back to mine. You don’t realize how bad a stock AR trigger is until you do that.

And in other news, you can, in fact, hit steel at 200 yards with a revolver. It took me three tries, and the revolver was in 45-70, but I’ll take it.

All you need is the headline to know who it is.

Now, according to the article he wasn’t arrested for openly carrying. He was arrested for illegal possession of a suppressor.

“But, wizard! Doesn’t Embody legally own some suppressors?”

Yes, yes he does. But if you read the article closely…

Due to his inability to prove that his weapon was legal and having a firearm silencer attached, Embody was placed into custody.

Tennessee code 39-17-1302 prohibits firearm silencers, devices used to muffle the report of a firearm.

…and you understand that the reporter probably doesn’t understand the intricacies of firearms laws, you’ll likely come to the same conclusion as me.

He was arrested for refusing to produce the tax stamp for his suppressor when asked. It is illegal to own a suppressor in Tennessee…unless you can show you’ve paid the federal tax.

The case will be dismissed when he decides to do that.

This is just another example of him intentionally being an asshole. This time he got the law wrong.

It is my opinion that his goal is to get open carry repealed banned.

Was Freiheit’s pocket cannon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huHOOrQXh9A&feature=youtu.be

(Okay, so there might have been some embellishment there)

You can order one here.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a Nikon P-223 3×32 with the BDC Carbine reticle and a Burris AR-PEPR Quick Detach mount. I’d read some good reviews for both, and they both happened to be on sale, so I went ahead and got them. By the way, some sites list the P-223 as having 1/4 MOA target turrets. They’re not. They’re 1/2 MOA.

My plan was to put this combo on the FDE Magpul Fanboy AR (I’ve put an FDE MBUS on that since those pictures were taken).

Two points: They don’t work together, and I’ve decided I’m not a huge fan of the P-223. Let’s explore why.

Here’s a stock photo of the Burris PEPR:

Here’s a stock photo of the Nikon P-223:

And here’s what they look like when you put them together:

Well, $%^&. That PEPR is solid, though. I am really impressed by it.

Okay. So now what? Well, regular readers will remember that I’ve got an M&P15-22 with a scope on it. That scope is mounted with some $20 QD rings. So it’s time to play musical gun parts.

 

If you’ll notice, the scope is as far forward as possible, but the rings aren’t tall enough for the scope to clear the MBUS. So I’ve taken the MBUS off and now I don’t have backup sights on that rifle (and also it’s not sighted in).

 

So, now that the saga of actually getting it mounted to the gun is over, I was ready to “play” with it.

Now, I’ve heard before that if you put a magnified optic on an AR with a front sight post, the front sight will “disappear” when looking through the scope. I’m pretty sure that I’ve even seen this before with one of oddball’s ARs.

Apparently, the 3x magnification that this scope has is not quite enough. It’s really hard to get a good picture of what I actually see due to eye relief and the size of the lens on my camera, but it’s a lot like this:

 

Basically, there’s just enough of a ghost for the front sight to make it really annoying and distracting. The BDC Reticle is also a little bit useless for me, since it requires zeroing at 200 yards with 55gr polymer tipped ammo, and the hashes are for 400 and 600 yards. Nikon has a webapp that allows you to recalculate the hashes and do some other stuff, but using Federal XM855 and a 100 yard zero makes the ‘s hashes fall at 325, 513, and 600. The app is kinda neat, but its gimmicky. They have an iPhone app, but no Android version. They also don’t offer custom turrets for the P-223.

So I’m not really sure how this is going to end. I have been toying with completely reconfiguring and repurposing the 12 pound AR and putting this scope on that. I’ve also thought that since I now have two QD scopes maybe I should set them both up with the M&P15-22 and swap them out when I want to play Tactical Tommy and use the 22 as a carbine trainer. I got to play with this scope recently and I really like it, so maybe I’ll get that, too. And now I’m just rambling. 😀

Oh, so I did end up using the PEPR for my other scope. Now I have a $100 mount holding a $50 scope:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtmsSY7mGwY

The first toilet is the one that we had the Bidet attached to.

Illinois State Police FAQ on Concealed Carry

And it looks like out of state residents can, theoretically, get Illinois Carry Permits.

Theoretically.

Out of state residents must obtain an Illinois Concealed Carry License to lawfully carry a concealed firearm in Illinois. In order for out of state residents to be eligible for an Illinois license, their state’s concealed carry license laws must be substantially similar to those of Illinois. The Illinois State Police will establish rules to identify the elements necessary to meet the substantially similar requirement.

I suspect what the ISP will do is establish rules that are so strict reciprocity will be very, very limited. From what I’m reading, they have 180 days to come up with the rules. Then they’ll start accepting applications.

Goal for 2014: Carry in Chicago, legally.