Category: Guns

In the winter of 2005-2006 I bought a Rock River AR, used, for about $700 from a dealer at a show. I’d always wanted one for two reasons: I spent about 15 minutes in the Army, so I trained on the M16 and Democrats had told me ARs were evil.

Now, at the time, I didn’t know much about guns. I sure thought I did, and I’m sure seven years from now I’ll say the same thing about something I buy this year. I didn’t know–or bother to ask–that the rifle was used. I probably could have gotten it cheaper, but it’s treated me very well. It was exactly what I was looking for at the time.

Flattop upper, M4 stock, heavy barrel (because, I kid you not, I thought the 16″ barrels with M4 notches looked stupid), flash suppressor, railed gas block, and standard plastic handguards. I’m fairly certain it came with no sights but its been long enough that I may have forgotten taking them off and tossing them. Basically, it looked just like this:

Well now it looks like this:

I swear it weighs 40 pounds now (actually, my bathroom scale says 10). I’ll try to recap how this tragedy happened.

First thing I did, I believe, was put a crappy red dot sight on it (similar to this one). And by crappy, I mean “battery wouldn’t last through one range session” crappy. You’d have to turn the brightness up to 11 if you were at an outdoor range, and 20 minutes later the dot would be too dim to see. It took one coin cell which, if you replaced it with a brand new one after it died at the range, would be dead by the next time you went to the range.

After that happened three or four times I was fed up. In Summer of 2007, I replaced that with this:

The venerable EOTech 512. Love that thing. New shooters love it, too. Point and click. Cheek weld? We don’t need no stinkin cheek weld!

I believe at this point I had also put one of those handguard mounted rail thingies and a vertical foregrip* on it. I know I had that setup for a while.

Eventually I “came to my senses” with the handguard rail thingy, and…got railed handguards:

Note, these are NOT free-float. I got them because, er, rails make you faster? They have speedholes? I have no idea. Around the same time as this idiocy, I got this three point sling (remember those?) which I still don’t understand how to properly use it, if there is such a thing as “proper use of a three point sling.” You can still see one of the fabric loops for that sling affixed to the M4 stock today.

Now, the very first time I ever went to the range with Oleg, I had a terrible calamity befall me. A couple, actually. First was my horrific embarrassment at being the only one without a suppressor. Another was that my Eotech wasn’t working. The alkaline batteries I had left in there for, oh, two years had exploded! And I still had no iron sights.

Having your battery-powered optic explode is bad. Not having backup sights is even worse. At the time, Magpul had just come out with their MBUS backup sights, so I looked in to getting some. What I learned was that while the Magpul MBUS Folding Rear Site would work just fine and dandy, the front sight would not. Why?

Because when I paid extra to get the rifle with no front sight, I severely limited my front sight options. The rail height on a gas block is much lower than the rail on an upper or free-float handguards. That, and apparently the MBUS front sight has been known to warp when mounted to the gas block.

So I bought a YHM Gas Block Mounted Front Flip Sight. Pay extra to have no front sight, pay even more to put one on. Genius, this guy.

Okay so now I have sights. And I was able to repair my Eotech after the battery mishap (and yes, it has lithiums now). But now I have a Magpul part. And I know who Chris Costa and Travis Haley are.

BAM! Off goes the vertical grip, on goes the AFG. I also ditched the sling because I found it was getting in my way.

The rifle stayed like that for a while, until I put a cheapie weapon light on it back in July.

Now we’re starting to get just a wee bit ludicrous.

The rail covers are starting to rot. They’ve always been a bit large for what they do, so I’m looking at alternatives. The rifle as a whole has a more bulky feeling than I’d like, but my use case is as a barricade weapon, not a house-clearing gun. Stay in place, let the bad guys come to me. My house layout isn’t conducive to room clearing with a rifle.

Well, then a friend at work tells me she bought a bunch of “backpacking” stuff from a Marine, and “there’s some rifle part in there.” As she’s describing it, I realize it’s a Redi-Mag. She asks me if I want it, and of course I do because TRAVIS HALEY.

So that’s how I got here. I’m probably going to take the Redi-Mag off because (and I don’t know if I just installed it wrong or what) it makes it really hard to push the mag release.

Maybe I’ll take some Christmas money and buy a free float handguard. Maybe I’ll build a new rifle with light weight in mind. Maybe I’ll keep it the way it is, and continue into self-parody when the new suppressor comes in.

I don’t know. I just felt like–confessing.

*Oddly enough, I now view vertical foregrips as a “oh, he must be new at this” marker. They probably always were.

Yesterday a 13 year old boy was accidentally shot at what we like to call “The Wild West Range” since it’s the only unsupervised public range in the area. I’d like to say I’m shocked by this, but it’s surprising to exactly no one who’s ever been out there. Because there are no RSOs, no lanes, no check-in, and no enforcement of any rules that may be posted, I never go to this range alone and for a long time wouldn’t go without wearing soft body armor (Yeah. I’m that guy). Everyone who’s been there more than a couple of times has a story of where they were down range putting up targets and Bubba and Cletus start blasting coke bottles 3 or 4 lanes away.

This range is the reason that Oddball and I took a gunshot wound treatment class from the late Paul Gomez. I encourage everyone who is more than a once-a-year shooter to take a similar class and put together a simple GSW treatment kit. I keep one in each vehicle we own and one in my range bag.

Now, all that being said, this is the first accident I’ve heard of in the 15 years I’ve been going to that range. Bubba and Cletus are technically correct when they say “c’mon, man! You’re way over there! I’m not that bad a shot!” It’s highly unlikely that anyone is that bad a shot, but I’d prefer not to find out.

This tragedy appears to have happened not because someone started shooting during a cold range, but because of a series of handling safety failures:

The boy, whose identity and hometown was not released, was shot with a .22 single action revolver, said Randy Cromer, who oversees the CMWA.

He was taken by Life Flight to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.*

Cromer said the boy was there with his father and another family member. They were checking on their targets when the shooting occurred.

He said several firearms were on a bench when a woman moved them and that’s when the revolver discharged, hitting the boy in the lower abdomen.

What appears to have happened, based on this limited report, is that someone left a single action revolver loaded and with the hammer cocked on the table. Then, a person who wasn’t familiar with the firearm started fiddling with it while people were down range. The negligent discharge happened because that person violated rules 1, 2, and 3.

Now for the good news:

Cromer said the injuries appear to be non-life threatening.

I told my wife last night that everyone is very, very lucky this happened the way it did. The boy was hit in the abdomen (rather than the chest or the head) at 25 yards (the closest target stand to the bench) with a .22LR (rather than, say, a .44 or God-help-us a rifle round) fired from a pistol (rather than a rifle).

The kid, and the woman who had the negligent discharge, are very lucky.

PS: I will happily and enthusiastically promote any GSW classes you can find. You can leave them in the comments or shoot me an email. I may make a new dedicated page for providers if I can find enough of them. Please, please, please take a class and make a GSW kit.

Edit: Reader Kevin suggests this class with dates across the country.

*I’m glad that we now know they will send LifeFlight to pick up an accident victim at that range. It’s probably 25 minutes away from the nearest emergency room, and Vandy is a level 1 trauma center.