Arca-Swiss, it is everywhere in the firearms industry right now and for good reason. An ARCA compatible gun allows for easy adjustments and installs/removals of pieces of equipment such as mounting the gun onto a tripod or repositioning your bipod on the clock. ARCA is a simple clamping system type of mounting therefore adjustments are as easy as turning a knob.

In a previous article we went over how to change your Gas Gun to the IWI ARCA compatible rail. Before the ARCA I was running a KAC URX M-LOK Rail with 1913 piece where I used my Harris Bipod with quick detach Picatinny mount. This allowed for quick removal and install however it didn’t allow me to move the bipod back and forth dependent on the stage or scenario. This is why I went to ARCA. After changing my gas gun rail out I now had to figure out how to connect a bipod.

The IWI ARCA Rail: Changing Your Gas Gun to ARCA

AREA419

In comes AREA419. A well known company in the precision rifle world. AREA419 is mainly known for their muzzle devices, reloading equipment, and ARCA compatible equipment such as rails, bags, and barricade stops. In this instance we are looking at their Harris Bipod ARCA adapter.

Harris Bipod ARCA Clamp Kit

The Harris Bipod Swivel style will naturally come with a rounded shape housing on the top and a clamp that connects to a swivel stud. Swivel studs are often found on hunter style stocks. Other chassis style rifles or AR type will need an adapter such as a quick release 1913, ARCA, or even a direct mount M-LOK. For the ARCA rail that was just installed on an AR-15 ARCA rail we will need the ARCA adapter.

Specs

Price: $100

• Comes with Harris Adapter and ARCALOCK Clamp Base
• Replaces the swivel stud mounting platform
• Works with the factory tensioning screw or a KMW Pod Loc
• Machined in house from 6061-T6
• Type III Black Hardcoat Anodized
• **Does not work in conjunction with Barricade Stop**
• Weight: 0.5lbs
• Dimensions: 6×3.5 ×2 in

Install

Install takes about 5 minutes if it is your first time and it’s pretty simple. See the video below for help.
Note: In the video below AREA419 is only showing how to install the adapter, not the clamp. The adapter is the tough part, the clamp is just two screws onto that adapter. The KMW Podloc that he is installing is a tensioning lever that replaces the tensioning knob. Also a great upgrade.

Tools Needed

• 1/4″ socket
• 1/8″ Allen Wrench

Personal Review

AREA419 always has great machining and parts. Right away I noticed that they didn’t use the cheap YFS screws from China which is fantastic as those need to be pretty strong in this case due to the stress being put onto the clamp.

Everything works intended however, there was one issue that I ran into and have heard from others. When tightening the clamp onto my IWI ARCA rail I found that I have to tighten it on to almost not being able to remove it, and if I don’t it will become so loose that it can fall off. Now first I would think this may just be the machining of both the rail and the clamp not really working together, however I did hear the same thing from someone else who was running a different rail. This issue may be because of the small pins that are machined into the clamp which are there to soften the blow of the clamp tightening onto the rail and not do any damage to the rail.

Remember, ARCA is still very new in the firearms industry and AREA419 is one of the first and few to even put a harris adapter out. So it doesn’t make me say no to AREA419 products at all because they do put out some of the best machined pieces in the market.

Other Options

If you did want to do a side by side comparison of what works on your firearm, the only other company I know of that is even making these is Really Right Stuff (RRS), which again makes industry leading things such as tripods and are THE company that set the industry standard for ARCA. Their adapter is below.

RRS Harris Bipod Adapter

Note that when purchasing you need to buy two items, the adapter and the type of clamp you want. For instance, if you want the type of knob as the AREA419 has, purchase the Bipod Adapter and the BTC-Pro.

To Purchase AREA419 Adapter

Click here to purchase the AREA419 bipod adapter kit with all parts necessary included.

Note when purchasing, the photos show the Harris Bipod however the bipod does not come with the clamp. You are only purchasing the clamp. Also, it is only compatible with the “S” style bipods. This is due to the swivel lever redesigning the housing. If you have an older style bipod this clamp will not work.

LAProgressive is not a bastion of constitutional scholarship, at least on civil rights with which they disagree. As the title suggests, they are antithetical to the 2nd Amendment and firearms rights. They consider the acting of owning a firearm absurdly hazardous. So this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

However, I want to see what a group who has never met a stat they wouldn’t spin into tragically comical hyperbole (so long as it would make it horrific enough to push anti-gun agendas) are claiming about ‘grotesque lies’ about the gun debate. Others have since grabbed this thread and ran with it if you’ve seen more recent headlines.

Please note, I have edited the article subheading a bit for clarity. TEXT: is the original phrasing with my clarifying edit afterwards.

America’s children die by guns far more than kids in other Western carefully selected ‘modern’ countries not because of school shootings or loose guns, but because American grownups of mature age are shooting them people we would and have called children or youth in a different context are shooting them, parents kill their families, and sometimes children are collateral damage in violent urban criminal conflicts, as motives vary wildly.

American ‘children’ do indeed die at a higher rate to firearms, but our age ranges for ‘children’ in these reports tends to vary depending upon how gruesome the data needs to be, not by a social metric that would bracket causality in a meaningful way. Add to that, our absurdly high gun ownership rate comparing any nation to the US but lacking a mention to any correspondingly proportional rate in any of the crimes, accidents, or suicides they are decrying, and top it off with examples of nations that have X, Y, or Z policy in place but are dismissed from consideration as not ‘Western’ enough to be a good example.

We do this domestically too whenever you see a ‘States with the most lax gun laws…’ post.

Please note, dear reader, that I’m not saying we, Americans, own an absurd number of private arms. I’m firmly in the “catch up, scrubs” camp when it comes to getting private firearm ownership normalized. I am saying that comparatively, there is no comparison.

If guns were truly the problem being claimed, we would know handily. It wouldn’t even be close. Flat earthers would sound more scientifically astute than someone with a pro-gun point of view. Instead, the homicide rates to ownership rates are all over.

We are the third largest nation in the world, we have the most firearms by an order of magnitude, and yet we are 86th in intentional homicide.

Perspective

Consider the most violent decades of adult life, especially male adults, are 15-35 with 15-25 being worse than 25-35. Consider that ‘child’ or ‘youth’ has been used to describe people as old as 26. We should take ‘child’ with a grain of salt in reports such as this, until given enough grounding context that we know what a ‘child’ is instead of what we think of naturally when hearing ‘child’. What we think of, and what writers use manipulatively, is a pre-teen of age 12 and under. What they use, is 19 and under ‘teens’, 17 and under ‘minors’, and occasionally as old as 26 and under ‘youth’ depending upon the source. If they need to a look a little more intellectually honest they’ll use 15 or 16 and under for ‘child’ because it catches the teen criminal deaths and suicides that are an unfortunate part of human maturation.

When it comes to ‘teen’ and ‘youth’ decision making, they can and are criminally charged as adults for good reason. In inflicting deliberate harm they are capable of adult rationale, they know what they are doing. What a teen lacks isn’t intelligence that their act will cause harm, it is usually the experience and guidance to see that harm as a bad thing, even for selfish reasons of bad as in ‘not advantageous enough or not enough gained vs risked’.

Accidents happen. Murders & suicides happen. What I would be curious to see, and what isn’t in this piece thus far as we’ve read, is how the US familicide rates stack against other nations, even ‘Western’ ones. Do those rates differ from our general homicide rates? Do they scale within standard deviations? If they are in line, as I suspect, within context of the respective overall homicide rates, then this isn’t a uniquely American problem at all, certainly not because of the 2nd Amendment. It is simply one in line with the current amalgamation of cultural stresses and ethos the nation is trying to navigate.

Consider this,

In a nation of 330,000,000 people, and more than that many firearms, what are the number of firearm deaths in a year for ages 0-12, even 0-14? They rarely exceed a few hundred. Because they don’t exceed a few hundred, as the third largest nation on the planet, this “report” and those like it are using several multi-year spans for measurement metrics on its various topics.

These firearm related deaths are tragic, yes, but the leading causes of death among various youth age groups, according to the CDC, go thus.

THE TOP THREE CAUSES OF DEATH BY AGE GROUP

0 to 1 year:

• Developmental and genetic conditions that were present at birth
• Conditions due to premature birth (short gestation)
• Health problems of the mother during pregnancy

1 to 4 years:

• Accidents (unintentional injuries)
• Developmental and genetic conditions that were present at birth
• Homicide

5 to 14 years:

• Accidents (unintentional injuries)
• Cancer
• Suicide

Accidents (unintentional injuries) are, by far, the leading cause of death among children and teens.

Now, let’s take a look at the 1-4 year age category since homicide did rank and the topic of this discussion, per the “American grownups of mature age are shooting them“, is adults murdering children.

Homicide is the 3rd leading cause of death in the 1-4 age range, and there were only 75 in 2020. That’s 75 too many of course, and the highest in the 3 decades displayed, but perspective and context matter and we get nowhere productive with the regurgitation of the “one is one too many” line. That bit of utopian vision nonsense has been used to argue for objectively harmful policies in the name of safety.

In contrast, one is too many deaths yet one life saved by a firearm isn’t enough to justify ownership. Nor 2 lives, nor even the 60,000 (minimum) DGUs which the CDC has removed from their statistics on firearms (with promises of a more accurate figure coming in 2023, we shall see).

Let’s look at all ages now.

We haven’t even gotten beyond the subheading and its all just so much… stuff, so let’s read on and see where its heading.

As depressing as America’s endless parade of shootings alongside its going-nowhere gun debate is, injecting reality into gun politics would make things even more distressing. Begin with the question at the forefront of the dubious debate: Who is shooting thousands of America’s children?

Thousands? If you expand the date range far enough, yes. I dare say if we look at date ranges 1914-1918 or 1935-1945 those look pretty bleak in Europe, North Africa, and in China and the Pacific. Who are killing ‘thousands’ of America’s children? The same people with the same motives who’ve always been killing them. This isn’t a new facet of life in the world.

To further contrast ‘who is shooting thousands of children’, drowning is roughly twice as lethal to children in a given year as homicide. But kids have to be able to swim recreationally, we couldn’t dream of banning pools right? It’s almost like risk is a part of life and quixotically trying to remove risks (far beyond conscientious mitigation at least) in increasingly absurd manners is doomed to failure and harms the credibility and legitimacy of the state’s efforts besides.

There aren’t even 400 murders on those charts for 2020, age 14 and under, with less than 100 accidents, and 224 suicides. Accidental injury is the number one cause of death in children and teens, and yet there are less than 100 fatal firearm accidents. This is likely the result of the one trackable positive firearm initiative, safe storage.

2020 was a really bad year for crime and suicide, largely due to the pandemic and riot stresses. It was also bad for firearm accidents among kids, compared to 2018 and 2019. Keeping kids all home had many unintended consequences.

But where is it that LAP referencing? Where comes this information to stir them up so on child firearm homicides?

“Gun violence,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s Weekly Update begins, is “the leading cause of death for children in America.” Bonta touts his Office of Gun Violence Prevention as “innovative… the first of its kind.” What “innovative” ideas, then, does he propose?

Well, there’s a problem. I don’t believe Bonta should be taken seriously regarding anything, least of all, “Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in America.”

The CDC begs to differ, unless we’re shifting older teens under ‘children’ again because of course you are. Convenient that we can’t define what a child is. Such a slippery definition, shifting dramatically depending upon what we need to fear for the sake of the children.

The facts are stark. Over the last decade, an appalling 2,401 American children under age 12 died by guns; two-thirds were murdered. A record 464 were killed in gun homicides in 2020 and 2021 alone, a uniquely American carnage. Gun homicides in general are rare in other Western nations; those victimizing children all but unheard-of.

There is that ‘Western’ again, where we pick rich, predominantly white countries, ignore demographic and socioeconomic inconsistencies that make the comparison ludicrous, and then say, ‘Bad America! How dare you be the third largest nation in the world with diverse socioeconomic groups and the challenges that come with them!’

The nerve. The audacity! The sheer audnervecity!!

Maybe if all of our immigrants and culture came from those whi.. um, civili.. no.. oh, ‘Western’ nations we’d emulate them more. Saying ‘Western Nation’ is the statistical equivalent of promising you aren’t racist or prejudiced because you have an [insert friend of appropriate demographic].

The US is highly diverse with a sufficiently separate and more recent developmental history. We’re also, again, the third largest nation on the planet. Our minority populations outweigh nations. We also have a tendency when ranting upon the vileness of US violence to gloss over the incredibly violent histories of all those ‘Western’ nations to instead look at a tiny slice in time where ‘Western’ nations have not had to resort to civil warfare or other lethal conflict in a few decades and declare ‘look at how well this works’. Ukraine gives us a handy example of how quickly all that can evaporate, just how fragile ‘Western’ civilization is.

Remember kids, our speciecial norm is tribalism.

‘Western’

Lowest Firearms Ownership

Seems like number of firearms has no correlation to homicide rate. Weird. Seems more like how well off and homogenous the population is matters far more.

School shootings of young children invoke tears and outrage among American politicians, interest group spokespersons, and media commentators, many speaking “as parents.” Then, they distort children’s shootings simply as tragedies the young inflict on themselves.

Ironic that we’re talking about distorting shootings, but victim blaming? Are we seriously trying to say that for the statistically rare and tragic incidents of terrorism and mass casualty violence, as compared to common assaults and homicides, that media commentators are blaming the victims? That they, the young, inflict this upon themselves?

I’m curious now. This has taken an odd turn.

Media talkers incessantly berate “young men” for committing “these shootings” such as the Sandy Hook, Conn., and Uvalde, Tex., grade-school massacres. Acclaimed Washington Post writer John Woodrow Cox, voicing the official/media consensus, denounces “teenagers who slaughter children:” the “biggest threat to the safety of children in our country” is “punks with a gun and a grudge” and children finding “guns… unlocked,” he fumes. Experts invoke debunked “non-science” to disparage youthful “developing brains” as recklessly violent. A recent CNN survey of “experts” found all but one simply blaming gun violence on “kids” and “youths” shooting themselves and each other.

We’re oversimplifying other media hot take oversimplifications here, that’s a big problem. Hot takes are already problem enough with their lack of nuance and information, just look at tweet or a VagueBook post of your choice.

Yes, the young are shooting ‘their own’. The problem is that distinction makes little sense as a denominator of a group, the two groups are separate in many ways in most cases. The one exception is high school shootings, which tend to be student or faculty perpetrated at a greater rate.

The age of ‘young men’ doesn’t bracket these people as a social structure, not the way a neighborhood, or classroom, or sports team do. We can’t ask, “Why are 20ish year old’s murdering kindergarteners at an alarming rate?” with any kind of expectation for useable information to act on. It is, quite simply, too rare an event to bracket it that way. We are asking the wrong question, seeking the wrong motivational source. Any rate of that is alarming, especially with the strikingly broad sample period of ‘all events’.

Blaming the deaths in Sandy Hook or Uvalde on ‘those crazy youths’, as if the age range 18-24 is a reason, is asinine. However there can be no denying that the current world of stresses and triggers has tripped that switch in a few young men recently and repeatedly. Especially those feeling disenfranchised, lost, vulnerable, offended, rejected, etc.

That, by the way, isn’t news at all. That is terrorist/insurgent recruiting 101. Find the angry young men and point them at the thing you can blame for their ills, resource them and they’ll do the rest. The CIA and the Special Forces hold this neat trick as part of their core missions. ‘Can you hear the people sing?’

But why here? Why is it happening domestically at such as seemingly high rate?

What we seem to be seeing here in 2022, specifically in the mass shooters, is an increase in the reckless natural, or I suppose spontaneous societal, occurrences of the trigger. A combination of the information age providing the right insulator conditions to ferment the resentments necessary and the continued proofs that this method of acting out will garner them boundless notoriety and attention. Why is ‘The FBI grooms mass shooters’ a popular conspiracy? Because of the terrifying plausibility of it, it is legitimately a tactic we use.

Far more likely is the Helter Skelter ‘made’ the Manson family do it, or Hinckley trying to impress Jodie Foster by killing the President, but magnified within the chaos of the online society. With all the information at our fingertips in record time and the ability to communicate in echo chambers of our choosing, the fringes can find each other and communicate with each other. That feeding off each others ‘injuries’, even if the vast majority of posts remain harmless spleen venting sessions, can push one of the most vulnerable and extreme past their trigger point. No deliberate pressure from [insert evil entity/org] to reach that result need be applied, the currents of online information could push hard enough within the organic interactions there simply because there are so many of them occurring. Add to that, there never has existed a more toxic interconnected environment, full of distrust and the ability to find the answers they want to hear, than we have today. This is one of the greatest risks of the information age and one that cannot be mitigated very well without losing the far greater degree of benefits it provides.

But what is it that they (LAP) are reasoning this out as?

In fact, school shootings and children shooting children, though unspeakably horrific, account for just 2% of younger children’s gun homicides. No one talks about who really is murdering children. The answer and silence are deeply disturbing.

Ah, now we’re shifting back to familicide.

FBI tabulations of age of killer by age of victim show 77% of children younger than 12 murdered by guns were shot by grownups age 25 and older — a consistent pattern for at least 40 years. More children are shot by murderers over age 50 than under age 18.

Most of the few child murders that are occurring annually are by familicide. They always have been. When they aren’t, collateral damage is often the culprit as a child is killed as a consequence of unrelated criminal violence in proximity. We’re again weirdly bracketing age alone as a social circle that it isn’t.

These shootings are hardly hidden, as just a few stories from 2021-22 show (“Father fatally shoots five children”; “Father shoots son, 3, daughter, 5”; “ “Woman kills 2 young children, herself”; “Father fatally shoots 4 people, including his 3 children”; “Father shoots 2 young sons, killing 1”; “Father kills 2 children in murder-suicide”; “Man charged in deadly shooting of 6-year-old”; “Maryland father shoots family”; “Phoenix father shoots, kills family“; “Colorado gun shop owner suspected of killing 2 children”; “Gresham woman kills 2 young children, herself”; “Father fatally shoots 4 people, including his 3 children”; on and on). They’re just not the “gun violence” anyone wants to talk about.

For several reasons.

Domestic violence is ugly but doesn’t carry the social capital that a terroristic incident like Uvalde, the July 4th Parade, Mandalay Bay, Pulse, or Bataclan do. Domestic violence is ugly, but its motives are often too humanizing. Where a mass killer can be more easily called a monster and separated as ‘was not really one of us’, a stressed husband, wife, mother, or father is more easily understood even if vehemently abhorred.

And people, quite frankly, have shit to do. Worrying about the 1-in-a-million asshole who would kill their kids, actually the the subset of them who would dare do it with a gun instead of drowning, smothering, abandoning, blunt force, or any other of the myriad ways you can complete a familicide, is not high on everyone’s daily to-do’s. It isn’t. Outside of the few who are at high risk of domestic violence on the regular, this isn’t going to be a blip through anyone’s consciousness.

2021 and 2022, like 2020, are banner years for social and domestic distress, financial strains, and people believing that their little slice of the world is at its end. Divorce and domestic violence rates went up dramatically during the lockdown. Suicides went up.

Some people in that suicide rationale reach that personal ‘world’s end’ and act out violently, they won’t go alone. Some are caught before doing any real harm, some aren’t. Crushing despair and anger are hellacious and unpredictable motivators.

Facing the harsh reality of thousands of 30-aged and middle-aged Americans shooting children, mainly in homes, would completely upend an already vitriolic gun-policy quarrel. The one consensus angrily battling gun-control and gun-rights factions share is the “right” of nearly all adults to have at least some guns, especially in their homes.

Ohh, now this is clever. Terribly dishonest, but clever. They’ve taken over a decade of stats to point out that domestic violence familicide claims the lives of most murdered children, not mass killers of a more terroristic nature. But then make the spurious claim that this ‘fact’ would upend the gun debate? The fact that is somehow not upending the gun debate despite everyone knowing about it.

The premise LAP is forwarding is that ‘How dare we ever allow guns in homes when sometimes those guns will then be turned upon the family by a family member…’

Nobody has killed their family any other way, right?

Ah, never mind. Now it’s just claiming that death by firearm is somehow a worse death than other kinds of death… because firearm.

Classic anti-gunnery.

“This is not about taking away anyone’s guns,” President Joe Biden declared of modest gun-control proposals proposals that will absolutely take away guns and increase the ponderous nightmare of buying one. An adult can own “a dozen AR-15s” so long as he “prevent(s) his deadly weapons from falling into the hands of a child,” Cox insists.

Fixed again. Cox could not be reached on whether or not pools should be kept away from children with the same vehemence despite them being far deadlier.

The easily-discerned reality on who is shooting children renders this made-up consensus vital to sustaining Americans’ gun discourse both callous and insane. Americans’ megalomanic concept of “adult rights” enabled one 64-year-old legally to obtain weaponry capable of shooting more people in 15 minutes in Las Vegas than have been shot in all 131,000 American schools in four years. No proposed reform would have stopped him.

Correction, that right has enabled that theoretical ability of mass murder for hundreds of millions of people. One crazy person did so and was not stopped. The concept of ‘adult rights’ and privileges also enabled the renting of the vehicles that have killed and wounded thousands of people. Notable among those are Nice, France (86 Dead) and Oklahoma City (168 Dead) with Waukesha Wisconsin (6 dead) added on just for fun.

How dare we let this concept of “adult rights” kill nearly 40,000 people in 2020 alone! No proposed reforms would stop these needless deaths upon the roads.

See, I can do it too.

That simple, stark fact with cataclysmic implications for safety cannot be published in any mainstream media or by any gun-debate lobby (I’ve tried). It is too threatening to the fragile set of myths that dictate how we discuss guns.

What myths? How so? We’re using hyperbole to make a mountain out of a molehill and and the mortar used to this hold this farce together against scrutiny is the blood of children. Maybe your stark fact is lacking something facts need to work, context. A kid dead at the hands of their family member’s gun, or a terrorist’s, does not change the cold calculus of wider reality.

That reality is that this isn’t the problem you are making it out to be. The outrage over the murder of children and the just need to vilify, shame, and prosecute their murders doesn’t contrast against the far more lethal forces of negligence and ill fortune. Accidental injury kills kids the most. This doesn’t make murders less guilty of their actions, it just means the fault is that of the murderer and not societies efforts at large.

In truth, as long as the right of nearly every American adult to have a gun remains unassailable, Americans will continue to suffer hundreds of thousands of gun deaths every decade, including tens of thousands victimizing children.

Now its tens of thousands? Didn’t you say it was 2,401 the past decade?

“Over the last decade, an appalling 2,401 American children under age 12 died by guns“

Yes, you did.

I would once again like to propose the banning of pools, which we do not have “unassailable” rights to as they are recreational, and would save more children. No? Okay.

Wait! Let me have a stab at it this way.

In truth, as long as the right of nearly every American adult to buy alcohol remains unassailable, Americans will continue to suffer millions of deaths (not exaggerated, here’s the CDC) every decade, including tens of thousands victimizing children.

See, I can do it too. So let’s dust off ye olde prohibition right?

However, let us interpret the seemingly unconscionable silence by gun-control groups (whose researchers surely know the facts presented here) as charitably as possible. They know that challenging the court-upheld right of every American adult to “keep and bear arms” would jeopardize gun-control lobbies’ already difficult politics, rendering the modest reforms they propose (background checks on gun buyers, bans on assault weapons, holding gun makers liable for reckless marketing, and “red flag” laws to seize guns from openly disturbed owners) all but impossible to win against implacable gun-rights forces.

Let us be backhandedly charitable to the organizations trying to ‘reasonably’ crush a human right? As they fail to use our absurd perspective on these statistics? We’re talking about a gun controller’s perspective on absurd about another gun controller. Use this ‘evidence’ to advance an argument they are already losing on multiple fronts to cold facts? Why would this be unconscionable I wonder.

One strongly correlated regulation, safe storage, is already in place and widely popular. It is strongly encouraged by all parties in the debate, and is having the notably positive influences that it can. But unless we are proposing that making a rule imposes a physical reality, you’re not playing in the same ballpark they are and your opinions are not helping their already shaky cases.

At least the honesty about not believing the 2nd Amendment should be a right and that private firearms ownership is the problem you seek to solve isn’t masked behind the usual platitudes. That’s refreshing to read.

Research shows these modest reforms, even if they would barely dent America’s enormous gun toll, would do at least some good. They would marginally reduce domestic gun killings, especially those victimizing women, and gun suicides. Therefore, this thinking goes, it’s better not to raise unpalatable gun-violence realities in order to win some beneficial reforms.

Except those studies are suspect, as we keep pointing out with the RAND analysis on those gun control studies. What we have is the hope of positive outcomes from implementing any or all of these policies, which rely upon the compliance of the notoriously uncompliant. Politicos aren’t looking for marginal wins, they’ll take them if they get luck but they aren’t. They are looking to remain elected and ‘doing something’ about gun violence gives them political and actual capital to do that.

If that’s the rationale, gun-control lobbies should at least observe some basic honesty and stop defeating themselves with lies about schools, youth, and startling, positive trends, to be detailed in Part II.

Oh goodie, there’s a Part II.

Look, these realities aren’t unpalatable. They are grim, but they statistically outly and aren’t fixable by a policy. Short of the violence of outright confiscation we can’t make the unreasonable few start to reason. Even after a door to door confiscation we wouldn’t be out of firearms and we wouldn’t remove motive. We would undoubtedly have increased the body count though. It is of suspect moral high ground to consider the death toll and unconscionable violation of personal sovereignty fine to allegedly prevent other death. Because some death is more badder than other death, that seems to be the nonsense here.

It just goes to show, again, the anti-gunner is perfectly fine with violence, or more accurately ignoring the realities of violence, if it advances a policy they like. They will then quite inconsistently return to being ‘ACAB’ against the violence of the state, even the necessary violence for their policies, when it become politically convenient to do so.

Nobody is ignoring preventable child fatalities, with guns or otherwise, it is consistently in the public discussion. More importantly it is a topic of professional discussions too. What defeats arguments time and again is the false assertion that preventable death type A is somehow much worse than preventable death type B, especially when B is far greater than A. Another false assertion that remains popular is that with a simple ‘common sense’ proposal we can fix death type A, but then we will ignore the infeasibility and negative order effects of the policy outright because of the alleged morality of said policy. We also won’t discuss nearly as drastic of solutions for the far more lethal, but more socially acceptable, death type B. All this combines with the dishonesty of statistical distortion, rather than taking a look at a single year and meaningfully trying to put a number of improved prevented fatalities 1-to-1 with deaths in that year is another of your problems.

When anti-gunners get asked which deaths would be prevented they vaguely wave at the number and say ‘some, maybe, we have to do something you crazy gun nut’ instead of ‘I’m glad you asked, here are the deaths the policy might have prevented, the likelihood of prevention, and projected effects and societal impacts of implementing the policy’. We even read the admission above that their policies are ineffectual, but we should be implementing their policies, or ‘a’ policy vaguely hinted at.

Americans’ megalomanic concept of “adult rights” enabled one 64-year-old legally to obtain weaponry capable of shooting more people in 15 minutes in Las Vegas than have been shot in all 131,000 American schools in four years. No proposed reform would have stopped him.

Then, when challenged on the decidedly negative effects of gun control, like its blatant racism, anti-gunners will go through mental gymnastics as impressive as those shown in this piece to show that ‘aCchUalLy… being for arming the Black community (and empowering them as full members of society) is the real racism, you know they shoot each other way more often.’

Anti-gunners have never met a standard they would not double or inconvenient negative effects of their policies which they’ll ignore. If too much noise is made about the negative effect they will totally promise to amend the law with a biased policy via ‘criminal justice reform’ all in order to have their illogical but moralist position to stand on.

Conclusions

It took me months to get to this piece of Ph.D authored moronicism, but it is just the type of preachy ‘I am right and you are wrong, see my shiny doctorate for proof… no not actual proof, just spun statistical evidence I twisted, selectively left out, scaled absurdly in my favor without a significant reason, and I’ll call you a heartless bigot if you don’t agree with me’ that I expect.

Look, I am open to evidence. I have changed my opinions consistently when given proper evidence and reasoning on many social issues. But one of the consistent facets of swaying my opinions, and many I know, is strong evidence combined with taking my objections seriously.

Not a single policy from gun controllers can survive that scrutiny, those that push them do not want to have the policies dragged into the ugly light to showcase those failings and they do not want to take gun owner objections seriously. These policies were argued up without addressing their weaknesses, so highlighting weaknesses highlights the flawed and dishonest methodology that is crucial to actually advancing the proposal.

Gun control operates entirely on a premise that the societal willingness to be compliant will somehow control the noncompliant. Those noncompliant people, whose true weapon is their personal autonomy, not a gun, or a car, or even water, we are promised will reduce in number. That’s it, its just a promise. No logical scrutinized walkthrough on how that is supposed to occur.

Just trust the folks we will be told to distrust in 2 seconds as the political topic changes.

Gun control remains farcically stupid and a Ph D. doesn’t void that.

Have a blessed weekend with family, friends, pets, or quietly as you choose.

To those working and volunteering, well done and stay safe.

To those traveling through the storms, please be careful.

And to all a goodnight and good times.

BE SAFE IF YOU’RE IN ONE OF YE OLDE BLIZZARD ZONES

ARCA, originally named Arca-Swiss but now everyone in the firearms industry just says ARCA, is the name of the game these days when it comes to precision shooting. Everyone is looking to change their rails, bipods, and binos to be ARCA compatible due to adjustability. It mainly started in the bolt gun world, however with the Gas Gun Precision world heating up there began a need for ARCA compatible rails.

Shooters started, at first. to install their own ARCA rail on the bottom of their existing MLOK or Picatinny handguard. With that though comes more parts that can loosen up. Shooters needed a full ARCA rail, not just an attachment. Along came IWI’s full AR-15 ARCA Handguard.

What is ARCA?

The easiest way to explain ARCA is to think of it as another attachment system such as 1913 Picatinny or M-LOK. All accessories need to be compatible with that style of attachment system and each attachment system has its advantages and disadvantages correct? Same with ARCA.

The history of the original Arca-Swiss first started in the camera industry in the 90’s by a company named Arca-Swiss. It is an easy way to mount their camera to a tripod and be able to adjust it. To learn more about that history Precision Camera Works lays it out pretty well. Although still widely used in the camera industry, the firearms industry saw it’s advantages and started using it in our world pretty recently due to a company called Really Right Stuff (RRS). They now set the standard of ARCA as a 1.5″ dovetail.

ARCA is mainly a quick release clamping system. Due to the system just using tension to the 1.5″ dovetail, it is an easy off by unscrewing a knob, and easy adjust by unscrewing a knob and sliding the item back and forth without losing the entire piece. No more having to use an Allen wrench to throw accessories on.

Options for the AR platform

ARCA Attachment

A lot of chassis in the bolt gun world now have ARCA built into the entire stock or chassis. However in the gas gun world that is not the case due to running with the AR platform. This means that rails will be Picatinny, M-LOK, or Key-Mod. To get around this shooters will simply install an ARCA rail to the bottom of their current rail system. The drawbacks of that is that will all of the stress put on that piece during use, such as pushing into the bipod that is attached to the ARCA, hitting the bipod on things, improper install, the rail can often come loose. You also often lose rail space with an attachment due to it needing to be attached to the rail in a certain spot. An integrated ARCA rail into the handguard allows for the entire bottom to be ARCA.

ARCA Handguard

The other option is a handguard that has the ARCA built into it, just like a bolt gun chassis can. This means no loose extra parts and all of that stress is now transferred to your entire rail to handle. Sadly, not many companies are offering this in the AR world yet, until…Isreal Weapon Industries (IWI) working closely with Cross Machine and Tool (CMT).

IWI now offers both a 15.5″ and 17″ ARCA compatible handguard. The rail still offers your standard M-LOK slots at the 3, 6, and 9 o’clock however on the bottom of the rail is the shaped ARCA 1.5″ dovetail.

IWI ARCA Handguard

Many rails today require the user to lose all M-LOK sections and other attachment points along the bottom of the rail in order to attach a separate ARCA section. Now being fully integrated into the rail, the Z15ARCA17 gives the shooter confidence in the ARCA’s durability that it cannot come loose during hard usage. The ARCA Swiss design gives the shooter the unique ability to quickly adjust configurations of accessories such as tripods, bipods, and supportive shooting bags on the rifle and to remain secure during firing and movement.-IWI

Features/Specs

Price: $249.99

Installation

The handguard package includes

The IWI website gives you the suggested torque values as well which is a much appreciated thing due to not all companies providing that information.

Suggested Torque:

Side bar: The fact that companies don’t provide torque values or an instructional how to install video is bad business practice in my opinion. To give a good review and have a good experience with a product it needs to be installed correctly. If someone doesn’t konw how to properly install a companies product and then just wings it and later it becomes loose or breaks, that user now thinks that the product is trash when actually it just eneded to be installed correctly. Hey firearms companies…MAKE INSTRUCTIONS FOR INSTALLING YOUR PRODUCTS EASIER TO FIND.

Tools Needed

Install was pretty easy. In my case, I had to remove my KAC URX4 Rail. After the previous rail is removed clean the threads on your existing receiver and clean the new barrel nut at the same time. After everything is clean, regrease your receiver extension. Now, slide the barrel back into the receiver and start threading your new IWI barrel nut on until finger tight. Now, ensure that the dimple on the wrench is placed all the way into the hole that is machined into the barrel nut and apply evenly/up and down pressure of 45 ft lbs of torque. Do not over-torque, this rail was tested and designed with this amount of torque, don’t change it up.

Now that the barrel nut is tight install your gas tube and block. Now, time for the handguard. Slip the handguard over the barrel nut and line up to your receiver. You will see that the nut has slots for the handguard screws. The handguard comes in the package with the screws and mounting bar installed so just follow that format. Screws go in from the right side of the handguard. Feel free to apply your loc-tite/vibratite of choice. I used loctite 248. Now apply 45 in lbs of torque and bam, you are done. Don’t forget to install your flashhider/comp..

To Purchase

Go to IWI.US to purchase.

When it comes to the slimmer 9mm striker fired polymer pistols, I do not have any particular favorite, nor have I really shot anything else besides a stock Glock 48 and the original M&P Shield. For the most part, it’s fair to say that all sub-compact striker fired 9mm pistols tend to be on the snappier side of felt recoil due to their smaller size and more diminutive weights; as result, they require a more assertive shooting grip. But recently I got to help a friend take his brand new Springfield Armory Hellcat Pro OSP on its maiden voyage at a local indoor range.

Hellcat Pro OSP First Impressions

The Springfield Armory Hellcat Pro is a 9mm Luger chambered striker fired semi automatic pistol originally made in Croatia. As a member of the Springfield Armory Hellcat product line, the Pro version specifically differs by virtue of its slightly larger frame, a longer barrel (3.7 inches vs 3.0 inches), accessory rail and the fact that it ships with 15 round magazines. Its slide is also optics ready from the factory, and it ships with a footprint for sights like Springfield’s own Hex Wasp or the Shield RMS-C (four lugs, two screws). Looking over the whole package, Springfield Armory is blurring the threshold between a sub-compact pistol and the slightly larger “Glock 19” form-factor pistols. The Hellcat Pro’s dimensions clearly stop at that margin allowing shooters to get the benefits and handling of those slightly larger pistols while remaining extremely easy to carry–with a total capacity of 15 + 1. Although the Pro is the largest member of the Hellcat family, this pistol is still only one inch wide. The Hellcat Pro’s closest rivals in terms of form and function are going to be the two larger members of the SIG-Sauer P365 family: The P365 XL and the P365 X-Macro. In my geographic area, the Hellcat Pro has a real world retail price at most gun shops and big box sporting goods stores of about $600 dollars not including tax.

For my normal sized hands, the Hellcat Pro’s grip did not feel too small, and the grip’s contouring is certainly geared towards every day carry and it seems like the Croatians did their homework on it. I was able to comfortably build a two-handed freestyle grip. Mild texturing that feels fairly grippy without being overly coarse or sharp wraps this grip, and it lacks any finger grooves. Like other modern striker guns in its class, the fact that such a pistol uses a magazine that crams 15 rounds of 9mm Luger into such a compact package is still something I marvel at. The pistol ships in in a small soft sided foam case and includes two magazines.

At a glance my single favorite thing about this pistol in particular are its factory night sights. The front sight is a thick and has a luminescent eye-grabbing laser yellow ring that surrounds a vial of tritium. The rear sight is a very generous U-notch with a white outline. Lining up the sights takes little effort and these make a lot of sense on carry gun. I have a minor reservation about the white outline of the rear sight. I think it is too busy, can be distracting to the eye and completely unnecessary. I found that when using either target focused or a front sight focused shooting technique, the white outline simply did not add anything. If I were to own and carry one of these pistols, I would personally use a permanent market to cover up this outline.

The Springfield Armory Hellcat Pro On The Firing Line

During our impromptu range session, we christened this new Hellcat Pro with three boxes of 115 grain 9mm CCI Blazer range ammo. I’m very comfortable using this cartridge across pistols and find it to provide very reasonable accuracy. Again, due to its smaller overall size and weight, the relatively mild Blazer round starts to feel somewhat warmer when fired from this pistol. It is not a big deal and it is only part of the territory of slimline 9mm pistols optimized for carry. At least it is easier to shoot than an Airweight J-frame! The Springfield Hellcat Pro’s trigger break is very reasonable and easy to manage; it does not have any spongy feeling or creep. I took some shots at 3, 5, and 7 yards just to get a feel for things. At one point, I decided to hang a clean target with an NRA B-8 sized ring and have the indoor range’s pulley system move it all the way back to their 25 yard line. I must admit that the result of my 10 round group at 25 yards using “range ammo” and a pistol I had never handled or fired before impressed me. More so because the Hellcat Pro’s night sights are great for defensive carry and shooting scenarios but are not necessarily ideal for precision shooting. Honestly, the Pro’s “shootability” is what prompted this review.

The Springfield Armory Hellcat Pro And Its Rivals

My review only covers first impressions and 3 boxes (150 rounds) of shooting should not be considered in-depth. This specific pistol appears to be extremely competitive against its SIG-Sauer P365 rivals, the XL and X-Macro versions. I’ve never shot any P365 so I cannot comment, but compared against a stock Glock 48, the stock Hellcat Pro not only comes with better sights and a better feeling trigger, not to mention the five extra rounds of magazine capacity and the fact that it includes an accessory rail. From a general real world retail price standpoint, this pistol is competes against the the P365 XL and the Glock 48, maybe with a marginally higher price. Compared to the real world retail price of the P365 X-Macro There are many holster companies that support this specific Hellcat variant. One of my favorite, Dark Star Gear, is currently developing an Apollo holster shell that is compatible with the Hellcat Pro’s slight larger frame.