An old joke is that the hundred dollar bill and I have a lot in common. We aren’t what we used to be. It is quite true. A thousand dollar target gun was once a superb handgun capable to the finest accuracy available. Today we have some of the finest handguns in the world that will outshoot anything available in the past. They are also proportionately quite pricey. A handgun priced below one thousand dollars that performs like much more expensive race guns is the SAR K12 Sport. This pistol will get you into the shooting sports and serve will until you have outpaced its ability and need something superior. That may be a long time.
This isn’t a concealed carry pistol by any stretch but a purpose designed target pistol. It would be a fine home defense and small game pistol based on its handling reliability and accuracy. If you are not a competitor just the same you will enjoy firing this handgun. The SAR K12 Sport features modest recoil even with the hottest loads. The SAR K12 sport is based on the CZ 75 pistol. SAR has manufactured standard CZ 75 clones in the past and it wasn’t a stretch to manufacture a target grade CZ type pistol. The CZ design has been re-designed and modified into compact handguns as well as long slide pistols and the type has proven versatile with the many versions successful in a given role.
Sarsilmaz of Turkey (SAR’s full name) is a respected maker of service grade weapons. They have well over on hundred years experience. The K12 Sport in SAR’s own words is their Crown Jewel. This is a bold statement and one that fits the pistol. This is a full size CZ 75 styled pistol. The pistol features a locked breech short recoil system. The K12 locks the barrel into the slide on the barrel hood and unlocks with angled camming surfaces. The majority of the pistol is stainless steel. The safety and slide lock as well as the sights are nicely blue finished. The handles are aluminum stocks. They offer and excellent balance of adhesion and abrasion. Both the front strap and the rear strap are nicely checkered. This pistol sets solid in the hand and doesn’t squirm at all- with the strongest 9mm loads. The pistol is modified from the original double action first shot format to a single action only trigger. The ambidextrous safety operates in a manner different from the CZ 75. The safety when activated keeps the hammer locked. The slide isn’t locked in place however. The safety may be applied with the hammer down and in this position the slide is locked in place. An advantage of the single action safety is that the pistol may be loaded and unloaded with the safety applied. The pistol is supplied with a two seventeen rond magazines. The rear sight is a sturdy fully adjustable unit. Windage and elevation adjustments were positive and precise. The front sight is a solid post.
In common with the CZ 75 the K12 features a low riding slide. The slide rides inside the frame rather than mounting over the frame in conventional designs. This results in greater contact between the slide and the frame and a lower bore axis. A trade off is that the slide is more difficult to rack due to the design but this isn’t difficult to deal with. The long dust cover helps provide balance in a heavy pistol. The barrel is 4.7 inches long. The slide lock magazine catch and safety are positive in operation. The pistol features a target grade magazine well that makes for excellent speed in reloading. Sliding a tapered magazine into this magazine well quickly doesn’t require much practice. The trigger is clean and crisp breaking at 5.9 pounds at the end of the test period. The trigger requires acclimation. I recommend considerable dry fire before you attempt the best results the same as with any target grade handgun.
The handle is comfortable for average size hands despite its size. The pistol is heavy at 44 ounces. Recoil is inconsequential. Muzzle flip is subdued. After firing the pistol for several hundred rounds over the past few months there have been no failures to feed chamber fire or eject. Like most quality handguns the K12 prefers one load to the other in terms of absolute accuracy but no loads were not accurate some were simply stand outs. The Remington 115 grain jacketed load is among the cleanest burning and accurate ‘generic’ loads. I have fired the Remington/K12 combination extensively with good results. When clocking loads and firing for accuracy I determined most loads generated 40 to 50 fps more velocity over the typical 4 inch barrel service pistol. As for absolute accuracy I have fired the pistol from the MTM Caseguard K Zone shooting rest with good results. I have averaged five shot groups of an average 2.25 inches with a variety of loads. The smallest five shot group has been 1.85 inch while the largest has been around 3.0 inch, certainly my fault. The pistol is accurate enough for most chores.
SAR K12 Sport 9mm specifications
Overall Length: 8.5 inch
Barrel Length: 4.7 inch
Action: Single Action
Caliber: 9mm
Capacity: 17
Weight: 44 ounces
Thanks to SARUSA for photo support.
There are many SAR variants each offering good performance.SAR offers a high grade X version of several of their handguns.Fit and finish are excellent.The author’s K12 has been a reliable and accurate handgun. The only trace of wear is a slight burnishing of the barrel hood.
There are many parts that make up a 10/22 rifle, and each one of them plays an important role. However, the most critical component of the Ruger is the bolt.
The trigger may be what initiates every shot, but it’s the bolt that’s responsible for the shot-to-shot operation.
A high-quality bolt affects more than just reliability. The bolt face, its consistency, and how the firing pin strikes the bullet significantly contribute to the rifle’s accuracy.
Faxon Stainless Steel Bolt Assembly for 10/22
Whether you’re building up a new gun or keeping an old favorite running, the Faxon 10/22 Bolt Assembly is the best choice.
Compatible with the OEM receiver, trigger group, charging handle, and bolt stop pin, the Faxon 10/22 bolt is fully assembled and ready to drop into your Ruger 10/22.
Specs
Material: 17-4 PH Stainless steel, H900
Hardness: HRC 40 – 47
Round Firing Pin
Sharp Extractor
Why Upgrade a 10/22 Bolt?
Upgrading the bolt improves reliability and accuracy on any 10/22 rifle.
A high-quality bolt such as the one from Faxon Firearms is properly radiused and polished to enhance the reliability of the cyclic action.
Additionally, the Faxon 10/22 bolt has the proper head spacing in order to improve the reliability of the bullets feeding from the magazine into the chamber.
Lastly, proper firing pin protrusion ensures optimal striking of the rimfire case.
For these reasons, upgrading your 10/22 bolt does have its advantages.
All these small gains add up to overall reliability, consistent performance, and improved accuracy.
Does The Ruger 10/22 Have a Bolt Hold Open?
Out of the box in the stock configuration, the Ruger 10/22 does not have a last-round bolt hold open feature.
To add the bolt hold open feature, you need a third-party upgrade such as the CST Auto Bolt Stop.
What is a 10/22 Bolt Buffer?
A bolt buffer replaces/upgrades the bolt stop pin in your 10/22 receiver. The OEM bolt stop pin is made from steel, whereas the bolt buffer is made from a polymer material.
Over time the steel bolt stop pin can cause micro-cracks in the receiver due to repeated impacts of the bolt during shooting. The bolt buffer mitigates that and several other issues by being manufactured out of a polymer material.
There are three main benefits of replacing the bolt stop pin with a bolt buffer.
It reduces the sound when the bolt slams rearward during the cycling action during shooting. This is also a benefit when shooting suppressed as it greatly reduces the noise signature even more.
The 10/22 blowback action is less shaky because of the dampening of the recoil and bolt cycling vibrations.
It can prevent cracks in the 10/22 receiver resulting from prolonged usage, high round count shooting, or the added stress of high-velocity ammo.
The Ruger 10/22 bolt by Faxon includes a bolt buffer to replace the OEM bolt stop pin. If you’re interested in learning more, check out more on the Ruger 10/22 Bolt here.
The big bore era of defensive pistols has come and passed, but in its wake, we have countless stories, guns, and calibers. One such caliber, and by extension numerous guns, is the .44 Special. In the day and age of black powder firearms, the big-bore revolver reigned supreme. If it didn’t have four in the name, it must be made for pocket carry. The most famous being .45 Colt, but that’s not to say that there weren’t plenty of other .45s and .44s.
The .44 Special is descended from the rounds of this era. Specifically, it came from the .44 Russian. The .44 Russian is an already interesting design. It was a black powder, center-fire metallic cartridge. It was the first caliber to use an internally lubricated bullet. The Russian nomenclature comes from its development for the Russian military by S&W. The .44 Russian took advantage of new and better metallurgy, and S&W amped it up.
The .44 Russian cartridge launched a 246-grain cartridge at 750 feet per second. That’s not that far from the 45 ACP, even though it was designed in 1870. The projectile was actually a .429 projectile, and they reduced the diameter by adding lubrication grooves to the base.
Aren’t We Talking About the .44 Special?
Yes, but we really have to establish where it came from. Fast forward from 1870 to 1907, and S&W we still in the early 1900s. S&W decided to take advantage of that fancy smokeless powder and designed the Smith and Wesson .44 Hand Ejector 1st Model New Century. They weren’t fans of short, catchy names. This gun became known as the Triple Lock. The name comes from the third locking lug on the cylinder crane.
This new lock allowed the gun to fire the hot and heavy .44 Special cartridge. Alongside this new revolver, S&W had taken the .44 Russian and turned it into the .44 Special. The case was lengthed a bit, and of course, it’s a smokeless powder round. This new cartridge and revolver succeeded and did well for itself.
Elmer Keith declared it the finest revolver ever made. That’s high praise from a man considered to be one of the foremost firearm experts and revolver shooters at the time. S&W’s cartridge was capable of throwing a 246-grain projectile at 750 feet per second. We are getting fairly close to 45 ACP territory and speeds.
That was just the factory loadings. It wasn’t long before hand loads became the legacy of the .44 Special. The factory loadings were good, but the hand loads went hot and heavy. Handloading this round improved its overall performance and helped prove the versatility of the round.
The .44 Associates
A group of shooters, including Elmer Keither and Skeeter Skelton, formed a loose collective known as the .44 Associates. These men would experiment with hand loads and share tips and tricks. Writers in the group penned articles and reloading data. Sometimes they blew up a revolver, but that was the nature of the beast. The .44 Special had grabbed hold of the American revolver shooters. This popularity would eventually effectively kill the popularity of this round.
Elmer Keith is well known for two things, revolvers and magnum loadings. He helped create the .357 Magnum cartridge by continually pushing the limits of the .38 Special cartridge. He eventually started to do the same with the .44 Special. He loaded it heavier and heavier and reached .44 Magnum levels.
He was getting this magnum performance from the .44 Special. Eventually, Remington decided to develop this hot loaded cartridge into the .44 Remington Magnum. They did lengthen the case by .125 of an inch. This wasn’t necessary to reach those magnum levels, but Remington’s rationale was one of safety. These hot loads weren’t appropriate for all .44 Special revolvers.
You likely didn’t want one slipping into a 1907-made Hand Ejector.
The Birth of the .44 Magnum
Thus the .44 Magnum was born. Its power quickly outshined ye olde .44 Special, and the round declined in popularity. It chugged along, and in the 1970s, the Charter Arms Bulldog produced a more modern .44 Special revolver. It became one of the best-selling revolvers of the 1970s and 80s, giving a reinvigoration to the round. After that slight bump, the round has somewhat faded to a niche loading.
This fourty-four shares the same relationship with the .44 Magnum as the .38 Special does with the .357 Magnum. If you own a .44 Magnum, you can drop a .44 Special in it and safely shoot the cartridge. It tends to be lighter recoiling but doesn’t seem to be much cheaper than standard .44 Magnum food.
Finding ammo isn’t tough. Underwood makes a load that hits 950 feet per second. Federal makes a .44 Special loading in their Punch lineup that’s a bit light at 180 grains and moves at 815 feet per second. Plenty of companies still produce the cartridge in seemingly small batches, and I found a couple of boxes in the first gun store I walked in.
The .44 Special delivers some big bore fun without big bore recoil, and what’s not to love with that? As the owner of a Charter Arms Bulldog, I’ve long enjoyed this dose of big bore It might not be the bee’s knees in 2022, but it has an interesting history. It came from one innovative round and became another.
The Senate’s usual suspects wasted no time getting in their token efforts to appeal to the gun control voters. With the House in Republican hands for the next two years at least they won’t even have to see the consequences of passing it, they can simply sit and bemoan how the Republican’s hate children and that the 2nd Amendment wasn’t a suicide pact (their latest bit of Californication) and reap the social capital.
It’s genuinely disheartening how often this is the play, and it makes sense… it works on the low-info rubes of the world who are busy with other things. I don’t blame those people for the priority they take on things like this when it isn’t a day-to-day like it is for me. I blame congress critters for using a cheap trick to do less work and not damage their social standing. This is best for all of them if it never passes and continues to be argued about. If it passes then they have to experience the fallout, again, and they can’t use it as a recruiting, fundraising, and campaign button anymore.
Here’s the statement out of Chris Murphy’s office,
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) this week introduced a pair of bills to protect communities from assault weapons. The Assault Weapons Ban would ban the sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and other high-capacity ammunition feeding devices. This includes the gun used by a shooter on January 22 to kill 11 people and injure 9 more at a Lunar New Year’s celebration in Monterey Park, Calif. The Age 21 Act would raise the minimum age to purchase assault weapons from 18 to 21, the same requirement that currently exists in law for handguns.
“It’s no coincidence that almost all of America’s deadliest shootings – including this weekend’s tragedy in Monterey Park – involve a military-style assault weapon. These are firearms designed with the sole purpose of killing as many people as possible and should not be sold to the public. Period,” said Murphy. “The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act proved there is growing consensus that we should require greater scrutiny for buyers under 21. If we don’t have the votes to ban assault weapons altogether, we should start by making sure that no one under the age of 21 is able to get their hands on these killing machines.”
“As used by the Lunar New Year’s shooter only days ago in Monterey Park, assault weapons have only one practical purpose – to kill or injure human beings,” said Blumenthal. “These military-style combat weapons – built for the battlefield and designed to maximize death and destruction – have brought bloodshed and carnage to our streets and continue to be the weapon of choice in countless mass shootings. Guns don’t respect state boundaries, which is why we need a national solution to restricting the ownership and use of assault weapons. Now is the time to honor gun violence victims and survivors with this common sense action.”
“We were tragically reminded this weekend of the deadly nature of assault weapons when a shooter used one to kill 11 people and injure 9 more at a Lunar New Year celebration in California,” said Feinstein. “The constant stream of mass shootings have one common thread: they almost all involve assault weapons. It’s because these weapons were designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. They have no business in our communities or schools. It’s time we stand up to the gun lobby and remove these weapons of war from our streets, or at the very least keep them out of the hands of young people.”
The Assault Weapons Ban:
Bans the sale, manufacture, transfer and importation of 205 military-style assault weapons by name. Owners may keep existing weapons.
Bans any assault weapon with the capacity to utilize a magazine that is not a fixed ammunition magazine and has one or more military characteristics including a pistol grip, a forward grip, a barrel shroud, a threaded barrel or a folding or telescoping stock. Owners may keep existing weapons.
Bans magazines and other ammunition feeding devices that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, which allow shooters to quickly fire many rounds without needing to reload. Owners may keep existing magazines.
Requires a background check on any future sale, trade or gifting of an assault weapon covered by the bill.
Requires that grandfathered assault weapons are stored using a secure gun storage or safety device like a trigger lock.
Prohibits the transfer of high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Bans bump-fire stocks and other devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at fully automatic rates.
Exemptions
The bill exempts by name more than 2,200 guns for hunting, household defense or recreational purposes.
The bill includes a grandfather clause that exempts all weapons lawfully possessed at the date of enactment.
The Age 21 Act:
Under current federal law, an individual is required to be at least 21 years old to legally purchase a handgun but only 18 years of age to legally purchase an assault rifle such as an AR-15.
The legislation would create parity in federal firearms law by prohibiting the sale of assault weapons to individuals under 21.
U.S. Representative David Cicilline (D-R.I) will introduce a companion version of the Assault Weapons Ban in the House of Representatives.
“Once again, on Sunday morning, Americans woke up to the tragic news of another massacre perpetrated with an assault weapon. It is far past time to reenact an assault weapons ban and get these weapons of war out of our communities,” said Cicilline. “We passed the assault weapons ban in the House last year with bipartisan support, which was then blocked by Senate Republicans. We need to come together to enact this commonsense, effective, and proven policy to reduce gun violence and save lives. I thank Senator Feinstein for her partnership in this fight and look forward to introducing the House companion bill in the coming weeks.”
So yeah, we’ll see what noise the Senate makes on this.
If the reading of that title leads you to believe that Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed (the set armorer) being charged with their negligence is going to be subverted into a discussion about America’s ‘gun’ problem, you would be correct. After three paragraphs covering how the family wanting Alec to face the consequences anyone should face for involuntarily killing and injuring people by negligence, and not get a pass for being rich and famous, because.. yeah, that is normal expected behavior, we get this point.
At that point, surely, we need to stop and ask ourselves: are we not missing a much bigger point? Is all that talk about what happened on that set distracting us from something far more dangerous — namely some Americans’ utter obsession with firearms, and the nation’s collective failure to properly regulate those weapons?
No, it isn’t. The coverage out of California should be proof of that.
It should also be proof of something else, since there were three shootings that are being discussed to extremely different degrees.
Dance club shooting, Monterey
Media: All High Capacity Assault Pistol! All The Time! This has been the common theme in the reporting
Illegal in California (probably, its a really old design so may actually have been legal to acquire)
Very poor reporting on the suspect. Described as 30’s, was 72.
Immediate Anti-Asian motive alleged. Suspect was Asian and known to the studio as a patron.
Suspect now known as deeply suspicious, distrusting, and often alleged people talked behind his back.
Half Moon Bay
Media: Another Mass Shooting in America!
More quiet about it being California, again…
Another elderly Asian perpetrator, is this an angle we can take? No, no we probably shouldn’t.
Weapon? *Crickets*
Legally owned handgun
Oakland
Media: “Oh, Oakland? No that makes sense. Never mind that place.”
But let’s circle back to the point, whatever one there may be and not harp on media biases in coverage where semi-auto 9mm scary is the headline they’re rolling with and pointing out that every semi-auto 9mm is.. well.. a semi-auto 9mm, with the same approximate lethality, would be unproductive.
Paragraph 2 after the pivot,
The plain truth is, people don’t get shot dead on films set. Or at least, they do very occasionally, such as in the case of Hutchins, and Brandon Lee, who died after being struck by a stun gun while filming the movie The Crow in 1993.
Immediately contradict your own point, bold play.
And to revive a middle school era phrase for this weird point, ‘no duh’. Of course shootings rarely happen on movie studio film sets, there are layers, upon layers, upon layers of protections in place that, when followed correctly, will prevent the vast majority of probable preventable incidents. Paying special attention to the most probable in a given scene, like checking firearms props because we’re going to be pointing them at people, is the normal work environment, not the exception to it.
There are other fatalties, and non-lethal accidents, while makiing films. Yet these tragedies are not common, so much so that when, in the aftermath of Hutchins’ death, the Associated Press was forced to search back decades for a piece on other notable set accidents.
Yes, both the spelling errors are from the original. Whatever, I make them too. All this paragraph says is film safety folks are usually good at their jobs.
Far more common are shooting deaths in America’s streets and schools and grocery stores, where people are routinely shot and killed, almost always by young men who feel aggrieved or left out or depressed.
People are most often murdered in frequented locations and by people with motive and opportunity? Not accidently killed on a movie set? Shocking revelations here in the hot pocket take on American firearms.
Far more common too, are the suicides or attempted suicides that can lead to devastating injuries that can maim and harm for life.
People die on purpose, theirs or someone else’s, more than they die by accident in an environment that employees professional safety staff and whose goal is to shoot entertainment and not each other? Jesus, the profound profoundries of this work are limitless.
A few weeks ago, there was brief outcry when a six-year-old boy took a gun into his school in Newport News, Virginia, putting it in his backpack as casually as one might pack their lunch. He shot his 25-year-old teacher, Abby Zwerner. Thankfully, she lived.
I remember that. There was a great deal of noise made that ‘if the child had been Black, the headline would read different’… The child was Black, the headlines read what they read. The child had also been quoted as wanting to set the teacher on fire. His home life must be great.
That incident was not alone. In 2021, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley shot and killed four student at his high school in suburban Detroit with a gun his parents had bought for him.
We seem to be shifting focus here to tragically stupid parenting decisions, which is tangentially related since it is being argued in court that Crumbley’s parents are guilty of negligent homicide for arming their teen and ignoring concerning behaviors up to that morning at the school.
Others get caught up in random shootings.
Can we stop with the random shooting nonsense, very very few shootings are random. None in fact, if we want to get into the weeds about it. But I’ll allow that things like people shooting into the air in celebration, or just because others are, or just because they felt like shooting their gun in a rather inappropriate place and time are all reasonably the random category.
Someone catching a bullet during an ambush or gunfight that wasn’t meant for them isn’t random, its collateral damage during the commission of a crime.
Every day, America is rocked by such horror, from large headline-grabbling incidents such as the massacre at Ulvade, Texas, or the El Paso Walmart, to numerically smaller, but no less individually tragic. These are the stories that fill the local news.
If it bleeds it leads.
It is estimated there are 400 million firearms in America, more than one for every single person, and they are used to devastating effect.
Yes, they are. That just doesn’t mean what you believe it does and the association you are trying to insinuate is undermined by the very volume of firearms the United States public has. If firearms volume were really the factor it is insinuated to be, repeatedly by unqualified sources, then no other nation could possibly be as blood soaked and body strewn as we are.
Top nations sorted by actual murder count, the rate, region, and guns per 100 residents also listed.
We own between 9 times (South Africa) to over 281 times (Ethiopia) as many firearms per capita as any of the 13 nations who have more murders than we do. We are also the 3rd largest nation on the planet by population, Only China, number 12 for murders, and India, number 2 for murders, have more.
Both of those nations only have about 4% of the firearms ownership the United States does, yet India’s murder rate is almost 4 times that of China, nearly matching the US in rate and tripling it in volume. How? When guns are so much less prevalent in these places.
In 2020, the most recent year for which figures are available, there were 19,384 gun murders, the most since at least 1968. A further 24,000 people killed themselves with guns, according to statistics from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Yes. Those are the CDC numbers.
Here’s the FBI’s
Since crime is a sociological phenomenon influenced by a variety of factors, the FBI discourages ranking locations or making comparisons as a way of measuring law enforcement effectiveness. Some of this data may not be comparable to previous years because of differing levels of participation over time.
The cautionary statement by the FBI is well taken.
Just think about it: at least 44,000 Americans were killed in a single year, and with honorable exceptions to the activists and community groups who fight on incident after horrific incident, most of us do nothing about.
Oh? So the armies of social workers, hotlines, support groups, friends, family, rehab centers, medical professionals, police officers, and so forth, to say nothing of the people and money spent from my industry specifically on education and prevention, are all just sitting around with their thumbs up their asses?
It’s just David Hogg and the really demanding moms against the evil pile of inanimate objects?
Instead, we have politicians such as Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott bragging about protecting the second amendment even as the bodies pile up.
Trump banned bumpstocks. Didn’t that help? Oh wait, it didn’t, nobody cared, and it was thrown out by the 5th circuit. Trump doesn’t get to brag, honestly at least, about protecting the 2nd Amendment. Cruz and Abbot, more so. I notice we picked Texas here.
You have situations where people seeking elected office argue that any American aged 18 or over should have access to the safe weapons as the military to protect the people against the alleged “tyranny” of the state,
Thanks to your typo there, yes. We want personal weapons at least as safe and effective as the military’s personal arms, kinda why we like the AR and 9mm’s so much.
Last year, Joe Biden and his supporters patted themselves on the back for signing a piece of gun safety regulation. It was feted as the most significant for 30 years, and yet everyone knows it was all but without teeth.
Thank you, finally someone on the other end calling the BSCA out for the anemic nothing burger it is. Just bureaucratic noise that won’t do anything.
America’s real Wild West is not the film sets of westerns, it is our schools and streets and shops and places of worship. It is the playing fields close to the Capitol, where members of Congress got shot and perilously wounded.
I mean, DC is really bad on their homicide rates but its mostly stuck in highly impoverished and crime ridden locations where violence is a currency. The weirdo looney who thinks shooting at congress while they’re playing baseball is a capital idea (pun intended) is at the least arguably more right in their utter wrongness than the one who shoots up a classroom full of elementary children for attention and/or to die.
It is clear this ought not to be a one thing or the other situation. America can work to address the way it thinks about guns and making them safe, while also improving standards on film sets and holding those responsible to account.
Ah, the tie in. We’re back to Baldwin’s blunder. We can do both!
So, all credit to the family of Halyna Hutchins for pushing for justice in the case of their loved one. Let’s hope the case proves that nobody is above the law.
Hunter Biden, please double check your 4473. Hunter Biden, Form 4473 please.
But if America is going to address its real gun problem, it needs to engage with a cold sharp dose of reality.
Reality of what?
That the three top states for mass shootings the past 4 years are always Illinois, California, and Texas, with New York coming in 4th for 2020 and 2021 (only 10th in 2022, good job NY!).
That Texas was only 1st in shootings in 2022 with 36, down from 2021 like everyone was thankfully, while Illinois took top “honors” the two previous years with 69 in 2020 and 80 in 2021?
That only one of those four states has permissive and ascribed ‘problematic’ gun laws?
That the common allegation that ‘permissive gun laws make states more dangerous’ falls apart if you look at Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire along with New York, Illinois, and California?
If you claim ‘Those aren’t valid comparisons’, you’re right but neither is the original claim.
That most ‘mass shootings’ (4+ injured or killed in any combination, not including the shooter) went unsolved these last 4 years (55-75%)?
That among the known perpetrators of these mass shootings, never more than 45% known also, 68-75% of them in any given year are of a particular demographic?
That the two larger demographics, who make up 75.8% of the total population vs. the of note demographic’s 13.6%, account for only 12% to 15% each of the mass shooters in any given year
The largest combined percentage (2022) of these two larger demographics coming it at 29% of the year’s mass shootings vs. the smaller demographic’s 71% portion?
That mass shooting occurrences dropped 43% in 2022 over 2021?
Despite more states than ever legalizing carry without a permit
The Bruen decision
Millions more first time gun owners
Millions of more AR type weapons than ever before in history
Is that enough cold sharp dosing of reality for you?
Bump stock ban? Wasn’t that a million years ago? We know it can be difficult to remember a time before 2020, but we assure you it was there. Look back with us through the mists of history to 2013, a time beyond imagination, with Joe Biden in the White House. A time when Democrats in the executive and legislative branches were fervently calling for a new Federal AWB, state-level background check laws were all the rage, and two Colorado state senators got tossed out in recall elections as a result. Ok so maybe it’s not actually all that different, but one thing that stands out, (and links back to the topic in the headline, we promise) is the passage of the SAFE Act in NY, and CT’s copycat bill.
Requiring registration of “assault weapons”, which especially in NY’s case included damn near anything designed after 1890, was to be the end of gun violence in New York. Certainly once everyone who legally owned a weapon that fell under this law was on a list maintained by the police, violence and hate itself would evaporate from the souls of all New Yorkers. Well, fortunately we’ll never know if that’s how it works because essentially nobody obeyed. Per Hudson Valley 1, 3 years after the passage of NY’s SAFE act less than 5% of the estimated 1,000,000 people who were supposed to be registering their newly minted Assault Weapons actually did so. CT had similar results, with both landing squarely in the ~95% civil disobedience zone. This pales in comparison to the rate at which Americans at large ignored the bump stock ban, but give the blue states some credit.
So now, when we see that the ATF’s own report detailing that, and let me bold this for emphasis, less than 0.2% of estimated bump stock owners obeyed Trump’s unconstitutional bump stock ban, are we meant to be surprised? Given that NY and CT both have 50% or more of registered voters listing their party affiliation as Democrat, how are we meant to imagine that something like a federal AWB would actually go over? 1/3 adults in CT consider themselves Republicans, and the gun laws enacted there were ignored despite being LESS draconian than the ones being proposed for the entire country. I realize this isn’t a humor column, but take a moment to imagine how deep red states like AL, TX, MS, GA, OK, FL, SC, MT, ND/SD, etc would react to this given the massive failure in powder blue New England. How is the near universal noncompliance with the bump stock ban not instructive to antigun lawmakers?
Lastly, with the recent overturning of the bump stock ban that nobody obeyed, the SCOTUS Bruen decision -and all of the evolving downstream state and federal court impacts thereof- and the general annihilation of anti-gun momentum that has accompanied that, is anyone taking the pistol brace ruling seriously? Looking at the record of such things, the answer is almost certainly “no”, but if you try to run a Form 4 in spring, let us know what the wait time is.
This GI gun is reliable but not as desirable for all around use as the Mil Spec.
It is an understatement if I say the 1911 is a very popular handgun. It is also fair to say that the majority are of recreational value only. I would never trust most makes for personal defense. There are pistols in the middle range from Springfield, Colt, SIG and Ruger I find reliable enough for personal defense. The 1911 offers a combination of emotional attachment, history, and deadly efficiency in the right handgun. Prices range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand. While you may not need a Les Baer or Wilson Combat pistol you do need a reliable handgun. Springfield recently introduced the Garrison to replace the Mil Spec pistol. There are still plenty of Mil Spec 1911 handguns for sale. One local shop had three on hand. I don’t usually have the reader running about looking for older guns. Usually there are better guns to be had brand hammer new. In this case you may wish to grab a Mil Spec!
The Mil Spec is a reliable and useful handgun.GI sights, left, compared to the superior Mil Spec units, right.
Most Mil Spec 1911 handguns are parkerized. A very few are stainless steel. Some are two tone although I have seen only photos. Some are olive drab. The parkerized gun seems the majority finish. The pistol features a lightweight firing pin and heavy duty firing pin spring for safety. The action, then, is a Series 70 or Mil Spec without a firing pin block. Yet the lightweight firing pin and heavy duty firing pin spring make the pistol drop safe. A lowered ejection port and high profile sights separate the Mil Spec from GI handguns. GI guns are OK while the Mil Spec is more useful for most shooting chores. The pistol features a short trigger and arched mainspring housing. I find this set up superior for fast combat shooting versus target shooting. Before firing the Springfield Mil Spec 1911A1 .45 lets look at the specifications.
Specifications:
Barrel Length: 5″
Weight: 36 ounces
Overall Length: 8.625″
Trigger Pull Weight: 6.2 pounds.
Recoil Spring & Guide Rod: Standard GI
Sights Fixed: 3-dot
Safety: Slide lock and grip safety
Magazines: 7 round- compatible with all 1911 magazines.
The front sight measures .12 wide as far as I am able to measure. An .11 inch rear notch makes for a good sight picture. There is very little lateral play in the slide to frame fit. Barrel to slide and barrel to bushing fit isn’t tight but snug as it should be. There is room for foreign material and powder ash but enough tolerance to ensure reliability. The slide lock safety is tight and indents properly. The grip safety should release its hold on the trigger about half way into compression. The Springfield requires the grip safety be ‘mashed’ nearly to the frame so be certain you have a good hold on this 1911.
The Springfield is a useful base gun for custom work. This one features Novak Sights.Springfield 1911 handguns are useful personal defense pistols. This one has been to Novak’s Gun Shop.
Firing test went as expected. I fired fifty rounds of Black Hills Ammunition 230 grain full metal jacketed ammunition at 7, 10, and 15 yards. The pistol comes on target quickly. Good hits were easy enough. I have a lot of time in with the 1911. I ate the X ring out at 7 yards and made good groups at 15 yards. A steel frame .45 doesn’t kick that much. The pistol is controllable and handles well. The sights are leagues ahead of a GI .45 but certainly are not Novak sights. I find the Springfield Mil Spec well suited to personal defense. The final and least important test was firing for accuracy from a solid bench rest using the MTM Caseguard K Zone firing rest. I used three loads. These included the Black Hills Ammunition 230 grain FMJ loading, the Black Hills 185 grain JHP and the new 135 grain Honey Badger.
Results: Black Hills Ammunition 5 shot group in inches
230 grain FMJ 2.6 in.
185 grain Jacketed hollow point 2.8 in.
135 grain Honey Badger 2.5 in.
Note wider deeper ejection port, top, of the Springfield Mil Spec compared to a GI type gun, below.
The pistol’s sights are well regulated for the six o’clock hold at 25 yards with the 230 grain load giving a dead on hold at about 50 yards. The 135 grain load struck 2.3 inch low. The Springfield Mil Spec is a great shooter for the money. It is well worth your hard earned money.
As someone always looking to learn, I’ve been looking at common platforms that I’m not that experienced with. The AK is one of those platforms. I love the classic Cold War AK, but admittedly I’m stuck in the stone age. I’ve begun to look at the world of the AK and what’s new and great within that field. That leads me to the JMAC Customs KeyMount muzzle device.
I’m fairly familiar with the idea of a 14.5 M4 barrel using a pinned and welded muzzle device. These permanently attached devices bring the total length to 16 inches and stay out of the realm of the NFA. I had no idea people did the same thing with their AK rifles.
JMAC designs a KeyMount muzzle device to do this and one for more standard 16-inch barrels. Keep in mind that the two models are different, and you don’t want to purchase the model intended for a 14.5-inch barrel for a 16-inch barrel and vice versa. Other than that, what sets the brake apart from the rest of the AK Muzzle devices?
The Humble AK and the KeyMount
My experience with AK muzzles is limited to the old slant muzzle device, the Krinkov style flash can style device, and at one point, a Tapco Razr. I know, but I was young, and it looked cool. I haven’t tried anything too modern, so this was a new experience. The KeyMount muzzle device isn’t just a brake but acts as a means to attach a Dead Air Silencers suppressor to the gun.
I don’t have one, but now I kind of want one, if only to make the best out of a 135-dollar investment. The brake is 2.82 inches long, but 1.32 inches of that sleeves the barrel. The additional length is only 1.5 inches added to the gun. In that 1.5 inches, we get four ports for recoil reduction. It’s made from 17-4ph Stainless for blast-proof strength and weighs 3.5 ounces.
At the Range
AK rifles aren’t shoulder bruisers by any means, but they do have some noticeable recoil when compared to other intermediate-caliber rifles. The 5.45 variants have much less recoil than the standard 7.62 models. That’s why everyone loves the 5.45, weight savings and better effective range.
However, the 7.62x39mm remains a hammer when it comes to hard cover. If you want to keep that hammer-like prowess without the recoil, then the JMAC KeyMount brake is for you. It takes a 7.62 AK and makes it feel like a 5.45 AK. It’s an impressive degree of recoil reduction.
You always expect some, but then sometimes you get absolutely blown away. I was blown away by how well this thing worked. It cut out recoil but also didn’t provide any noticeable increase in flash. I’m not firing under NVGs, but for standard daylight shooting, it’s perfectly fine. There is a lot of noise, and you wouldn’t make friends at an indoor range.
The KeyMount Brake delivers as promised. It’s an impressive showing and an effective way to convince me to try suppressing my AK.
After the gun registration amnesty window closes what happens if the application gets denied because an @ATFHQ bureaucrat doesn't complete the background check on-time? (Denials are automatic after 88 days) A common bureaucratic denial could make compliant gun owners into FELONS! pic.twitter.com/P03KDqv8tk
GOA is raising alarms that the ATF’s ruling on pistol braces, and the resultant pistol brace amnesty and registration period may not be as benign as it seems. In case you’ve missed it, this week the ATF released an administrative ruling that pistol braces -which they have specifically allowed the sale and use of for a decade- placed on a pistol as intended by the manufacturer constitute the construction of an unregistered NFA device. They have graciously offered a 120 day grace period in which some of the 40,000,000 people who bought braces can register their braced guns as SBRs, without the usual $200 fee.
While this pistol brace amnesty period, and waived fee sound pretty great, there has been some understandable skepticism in the gun and legal communities surrounding the details of how this might actually shake out IRL, and they’ve raised some frightening and accurate points. The FBI often, for administrative reasons, fails to complete NICS background checks, to the tune of between 2-3% of the total. After 88 days those checks are purged, and any paperwork or progress simply vanishes, incomplete. It’s like the check was never initiated. Over a 5 year period, the number of such cases was over 1 million.
Now consider, (and this has been proposed by a GOA lawyer and confirmed by an ATF employee which must assume know their stuff) what might happen if you send in an application for what is legally an unregistered SBR, providing a photograph of said unregistered NFA item, along with all of your personal information to take advantage of this pistol brace amnesty. Say you got a late start, and took a while with the paperwork but still got your application in with two months to go before the pistol brace amnesty ends. But you wind up one of those >2% whose application falls off the back of a truck, and 88 days later, is purged. The ATF now knows that you are, under the law, a felon. Not only that, they know everything about you from where you live, to what you and your unregistered SBR look like. Per GOA Attorney Stephen Stamboulieh, ATF representatives @ SHOT 2023 confirmed they would prosecute in such a case.
The consequences of this are functionally life-changing -with up to a decade in federal prison, hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, and a federal firearms felony on your record- so it’s not without cause that the circumstances of the pistol brace amnesty are drawing attention. Notably the entire ruling is in question after a Federal Appeals Court overturned Trump’s similarly overreaching, contortionist logic bumpstock ban, but in the meantime, gun owners shouldn’t be afraid of a Federal LE Agency ruining their lives for simply attempting to comply with new regulatory decisions.
“After the gun registration amnesty window closes what happens if the application gets denied because an @ATFHQ bureaucrat doesn’t complete the background check on-time? (Denials are automatic after 88 days) A common bureaucratic denial could make compliant gun owners into FELONS!”
“This happens ALL THE TIME and it is UNACCEPTABLE that an @ATFHQ representative @NSSFShotShow told GOA attorney@Stambo2A that they would take enforcement action against a gun owner wishing to comply with this unconstitutional gun registration scheme.”
“The new rule creates background checks for up to 40 million firearms, and if the FBI statistics on not completing 2.2% of them stay the same, that means up to 880,000 new felons with a regulatory stroke of the pen & a bureaucratic screw up.”
Vaultek came to light recently when SIG Sauer launched their Rose line. This line invites women to be apart of the firearms community without the intimidation. The kit includes a custom SIG P365 Rose, dummy rounds, training program from Lena Miculek, and a Vaultek Lifepod. The fact that a new firearms owner can immediately own something that is very important to owning a firearm safely is great. A Vaultek Lifepod allows users to safely store their firearm yet retrieve it quickly with the touch of a button.
This year at SHOT Show Vaultek showed us this and a couple of other great products that include biometrics, humidity control, and a clock. Crazy right?
DS2I Smart Station
Price:$479.99
Features
Fits one full size pistol and one compact
Entry methods include biometric scanner, smart sense keypad, backup keys, and vaultek nano key
automatic and silent opening drawer once entry method is complete
internal light and soft padded insert
digital touch display that shows time/temp/humidity
wireless charging, micro-usb, and usb-c ports for additional chargers
anti theft features such as the ability to tether it to your wall, tampering detection, and sleep move if wrong codes/fingerprints are entered
The DS2i Smart Station features multiple ways to charge your phone including wireless, micro-usb, and usb-c. The display shows status of the vault, the time, and temperature info.The inside of the DS2i features a protective cushion insert and internal light. When entry is made into the vault this drawer will automatically open up quietly and quickly.
LifePod
Price: $109.99 Special Edition Price: $139.99
Features
4 digit backlit key pad showing lock pad, status of the vault, and battery left
meets TSA guidelines
micro-USB port for back up power if battery dies
backup key access, two manual keys are included in the package
anti-picking feature can be engaged to prevent lock picking
anti impact latch
high density foam interior
tether attachment point
airtight and weather resistant storage
floats
On the left, the custom Lifepod for the SIG Sauer Rose. On the right, the Lifepod 2.0. This is a larger version of the Lifepod 1.0.
LifePod Micro
Coming April 2023 but Accepting Pre-Order Now
The LifePod Micros give you everything that the Lifepod already does but in a smaller size. Though not available until April 2023, pre-orders can be placed by calling Vaultek.
For more information on each product or to place a pre-order for a LifePod Micro visit vaulteksafe.com
Brandon Tsay (left) wrestled the shooter, eventually getting the gun away from him and pushing him off. The shooter retreated and took his own life
Images are screencaps from a video shared by @FiftyShadesofFDE, who appears to be shadow banned for his trouble.
While the California Governor was crying about the 2nd Amendment being a suicide pact and a 2nd mass shooting occurred in his state as his legislative and regulatory nonsense failed again, resulting in 7 deaths and perpetrated by another elderly Asian male, new details have emerged about the Monterey Park shooting.
The young man in the photo, wearing the white sweatsuit and jacket, has been identified as Brandon Tsay and he wrestled away the shooter’s gun at the 2nd dance studio, Lai Lai Dance Studio in Alhambra, and then fought with the assailant some time more until the much older man gave up and left. The man then took his own life in a vehicle that was being approached by police.
Mr. Tsay showed extraordinary courage. I’m sure a few viewers of the video may be critical of Tsay, wondering why he didn’t shoot back once he had the weapon. To this I will point out a few things. We don’t know if the barrel shrouded MAC10 (or similar) pistol was in a condition to be fired, that Tsay had any notion how to operate the 60ish year old weapon design, and Tsay is fighting a man old enough to be his grandfather. That last part, harming a senior member of your community, is a violation of ancient taboos and not to be considered and judged against lightly. Ultimately what Tsay did worked, he stopped the attack and the last person to die was the attacker.
Still more have started to don their tin foil apparel, and honestly I can’t be too critical of them for it because of the timing, and point out how “obvious” it is that these two attacks were staged to push gun control. This has been a popular conspiracy online, fired by coincidence that is easily explained with detailed analysis and the application of Occam’s Razor, but on the surface look suspicious. Before these latest two shootings in California, moving the conspiracy trope to elderly Asian male perpetrators, it was popular to farcically suggest gun stores should not sell Daniel Defense rifles and EOTech sights to very skinny young white men, as they had been present at more than one recent shooting. Theorists went so far as to publish a whole series of memes suggesting these young men were stoked to violence by the FBI. I don’t believe that, but the Federal government’s record on actions similar to that aren’t exactly spotless either.
Federal enforcement and operations have not shown themselves to be anywhere like beyond reproach. Instead their past actions invite the public and judiciary to use the most extreme scrutiny on all of their actions.
Brandon Tsay wrestles the shooter, eventually getting the gun away from him. Screencap.
Media Response
Now that we’ve given Mr. Tsay his well earned praise, let’s go back to the media, the CA Governor, and all the other fools who’ve contributed to the line “Semi-Automatic Assault Pistol with an Extended High Capacity Magazine.” which would score about a D in any middle school English paper for redundancy. Way to aim for journalist excellence, CNN and friends.
Tsay keeping the attacker away from the MAC10 type pistol. The shooter (dressed in dark clothes and a a hat) continues to try and get it back.
In a time where a large segment of American gun owners are being attacked by the ATF (threatened with felony conviction) over pistol braces, people where terrified the shooter had used a braced gun. Especially with the media description, this seemed like ammunition in gun controllers magazine.
Instead we have an old man shooting an old gun. The MAC10/11 series were designed in 1964, produced in the 70’s, and have been cloned/copied here and there by other companies. They are large, blocky, heavy pistols that came with a barrel shroud to emulate the suppressor they were originally designed with. They had a 30 or 32 round magazine, depending on caliber, cost only $120 at the time, and an effective range of 50 or 70 meters.
I don’t know which model or clone the shooter used (Vox has reported Corbay M11, 9mm), but it is not any variant of a modernized rifle caliber and it wasn’t braced. This firearm could have been purchased any time in the last few decades, there was even a AWB compliant version made during the 94-04 Clinton Assault Weapon Ban called the PM11/9. It had ‘safe’ 10 round magazines and couldn’t accept the super dangerous thread on barrel extender, flash suppressor, handgrip, or a suppressor. None of which material alter the physics of a bullet, many of which make the gun more awkward to carry, and one of which is already NFA controlled (meaning the owner is registered and known to the ATF).
The descriptor tells us it was a semi-auto model. It looks to be a closed bolt model too, making it a post 80’s of some variety as the ATF considers the open bolt ones machine guns, even if semi-auto only (see, making things up is an ATF tradition).
The 72 year old attacker continues to try and retrieve his cold war era pistol.
None of the age or blocky awkwardness of this cold war relic come through in the CNN fearmongery, and that feels deliberate. It probably is deliberate. Never let a good tragedy go to waste. We can’t use any of the usual lines about ‘weapons of today being so power’ since this isn’t a weapon of today, this thing may have been built before I was born. We can’t say modern high power ammunition because all the calibers this thing could be in are about a century old.
It fails all the sniff tests of the scary terms thrown out by the inept and thwarted elites who drive the gun control debate because they refuse to accept that they cannot control human free agency, they cannot remove motive, and therefore there isn’t diddlyshit they can do to stop gun violence.
Vox opines, that is unclear if the elderly shooter acquired his ‘probably illegal’ pistol through legal means. But here’s the kicker, what if he did? What if he bought this when it was legal? What then? What if he didn’t get it through legal means and just bought it from someone who did after the CA or Federal AWB? What then?
Both of these scenarios are equally adept at proving, again, gun control doesn’t work. It requires voluntary compliance that they will not receive and you need only look at the brace ban commentary, the ATF still hasn’t published it to the federal registry by the way, to get an estimate of just how well modern and past compliance are working out. That rule is likely to be stomped out in court like the bumpstock one, the ATF does not possess law making authority and assault weapons bans nationwide are in the line of fire too.
Media sources around the nation are going to elevate this tragedy to something we could have prevented without giving us even the slightest hint how a new rule would have prevented the tragedy. That continues to be a fatal flaw in their logic, [X] rule wouldn’t prevent this or other attacks but we need [X] rule in order to prevent attacks… okay, which ones?
In conclusion, hyperbole, fearmongering, exaggeration, and criminally negligent wishful thinking continue to be the order of the day for gun controllers. Disappointing.
But men and women like Tsay, Fierro, and Dicken give me hope. People willing to step up and act in the moment when the laws have failed, as they will always have the potential to do and will continue to, will continue to save lives through their actions. People who aren’t going to lean upon the ghost of an argument that ‘the thing happening is illegal’ or that ‘these things shouldn’t happen’ and simply deal with the fact that they are happening. Billions of things shouldn’t happen every single day that do, they happen anyway due to nature, negligence, misunderstanding, anger, accident, and occasionally pure cruelty.
We can’t write any of those things out of existence with a law. We should stop trying. Stop believing people who say we can, too. They are only delusional, or lying, and I couldn’t tell you which is more harmful in the end right now.
With attention to detail evident the Auto Ordnance is a good shooting 1911.
The 1911 reviewed today is a close copy of the original US Miliary 1911, at least those manufactured after 1924. The early pistols were 1911 handguns the 1911A1 featured certain improvements such as an arched mainspring housing, finger cuts in the frame, improved sights and beavertail safety re-design, and short trigger. The Auto Ordnance 1911A1 is an American made handgun with a dark matte finish, plastic grips, and good fitting and attention to detail. This is a Government Model 1911A1 with a five inch barrel. Overall length is 8.5 inches. The pistol weighs 38 ounces. The pistol is supplied with a single 7 round magazine. Early features such as a lanyard ring and small sights are part of the package. The pistol isn’t difficult to operate. Load the magazine, rack the slide to the rear, insert the magazine, and lower the slide. Place the safety into its notch in the slide. The pistol is then cocked and locked. Some modern pistols claim cocked and locked but they are really only cocked and safety on. The 1911 safety locks the slide in place when applied. A grip safety prevents travel of the trigger unless the grip safety is pressed forward. The Auto Ordnance version releases its hold properly about half way into travel. No matter how hard you pull the trigger the hammer will not fall if the safety is applied. If you drop the pistol the grip safety springs out and prevents hammer movement. The slide serrations are true to the original 1911A1 and the pistol is easily field stripped in true 1911 form. The sights are embryonic fixed units. While we could hit better with larger sights then this would not b a true 1911A1 reproduction, an important point. While such sights are fine for short range use they are difficult to use at extended distances. I am not certain the Army intended them simply for short range combat and shooting enemy horses. Military accuracy standard with 230 grain jacketed service loads were a five inch group at 25 yards and a ten inch group at 100 yards. Most 1911 handguns of the day were more accurate than this. Since the pistol fits most hands well with a good natural heft the small sights are not as great a hinderance as we might think.
The Auto Ordnance 1911 A1 .45 is a solid GI type gun.While there are certain detail changes in the A/O pistol compared to the original 1911 they are beneficial.
The ejection port – sometimes called slide window in period reports- is small. So was the original. Modern enlarged ejection ports made administrative handling much easier. There are differences between the Auto Ordnance and original as may be expected. The pistol is a little tighter with less lateral play between the slide and the frame than a wartime 1911. We like our pistols to be accurate more so than we need them to come up shooting after a drop in the mud these day. The second addition is a firing pin block. This prevents forward travel of the firing pin if the pistol is dropped, particularly if dropped on the muzzle. This doesn’t affect the trigger action as the Auto Ordnance pistol features a trigger that breaks at a clean 7.2 lbs. Forgings are stronger than steel and the primary action parts of the 1911A1 are steel. A 1911 must have 1/32 inch clearance between the two halves of the feed ramp for proper feeding. The Auto Ordnance neatly accomplishes this. The top of the chamber should also be smooth. This handgun accomplishes this as well. The barrel bushing is snug but only finger tight.
Firing the handgun was pleasant enough. I chose Black Hills Ammunition 230 grain FMJ ammunition for test firing. This is the original ‘hardball’ loading or close enough. At 850 fps this is a formidable load. Powder burn is clean and as a result of this full burn muzzle signature is limited- just a few sparks at best. At 7 yards the pistol was quickly brought to eye level and fired. I chewed up the target center. At longer range you must concentrate on the small sights. With good light and a target of contrasting color good results are possible. At a long 25 yards I destroyed a man sized target. Firing from the MTM Caseguard K zone shooting rest I carefully benchrested two loads. First, the BHA 230 grain FMJ. I added the Black Hills 230 grain JHP as well. The FMJ load put five rounds into three inches and the 230 grain JHP three rounds into 2.9 inch- four of them in 2.2 inches. The pistol is reliable and accurate as far as I can tell from firing 120 rounds.
The author’s personal Auto Ordnance is a good performer.Black Hills 230 grain JHP ammunition provided good results.
If you chose to carry this handgun cocked and locked hammer to the rear and safety on is the preferred carry. This makes for rapid manipulation and a fast first shot hit. Sure you may wish to purchase a modern 1911 with superior sights and a crisp trigger action. If you respect the .45 ACP cartridge as I do then you may deploy a Glock 21. Just the same if you wis to own a 1911A1 that is reliable and functions well this is the one.
If everyone should own a 1911- this is a good choice at a fair price.
Auto-Ordnance 1911A1 Specs
Caliber: .45 ACP
Capacity: 7+1
Barrel Length: 5.0″
Overall Length: 8.5″
Height: 5.5″
Width: 1.34″
Weight: 38 ounces
Slide Material: Steel
Frame Material: Steel
Safeties: Grip safety, thumb safety, firing pin safety
Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Capt. Andrew Meyer briefs the media in Monterey Park, California, on Sunday. Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
Of what?
Several things, actually. That the “typical” shooter doesn’t exist because shootings are atypical behavior. That shooters are not always younger. That shooting motivations are not solely ‘hate’ or racially based, those are simply two powerful motives among the list. That violence within communities is the norm, not across communities.
Most succinctly, not a single one of California’s A+ rated gun control laws stopped this geriatric from shooting around 20 people in Monterey Park, killing 10 of them. Not. A. One.
The copium is already flowing from the usual sources, stating that ‘well.. the laws didn’t work in this instance, and they don’t stop all violence.. but we promise they ‘help’ guys, believe us please’. Instead of acknowledging that their random prohibitions on comfort features for firearms does nothing to police extreme manifestations of violence, they continue to insist that every hole within their logical consistency is ‘outside the norm’. The irony is so deep there.
Gun controllers have built their entire identities on the lie that partial random item prohibitions can curb human behaviors and motivations. We keep stacking events and locations that prove otherwise and the coping continues to get more and more absurd. We have states with very permissive firearms cultures with low violence. We have states with restrictive schemes with high violence, often more than their more permissive neighbors. We have two large states, our nation’s largest population wise, with very different firearm regulation outlooks and nearly identical rates of violence. That should be a clue.
“We don’t know if this is specifically a hate crime defined by law, but who walks into a dance hall and guns down 20 people,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said.
That is a problem. The specific propensity for law enforcement in certain regions of this country to default to ‘Hate Crime’ as a motive instead of waiting until enough facts are in hand to say yes or no has lead to a further complication of mass shooting narratives. It’s easy to say hate crime when its a group event that gets targeted and its hard to recant that afterwards. We have serious issues with narrative honesty in this country’s media circus.
The facts at hand state the 72 year old shooter, who was first described as a 30 something male, used what the Sheriff described as “a magazine-fed semiautomatic assault pistol” that is probably not legal in California. His motives remain under investigation. He was known to at least the first location he attacked, a ballroom dance studio he apparently frequented on the regular.
“Gun violence needs to stop,” Luna said. “There’s too much of it.”
Thanks, Sheriff… very wise. Super helpful. How did that probably illegal ‘assault pistol’ get by all your gun violence laws? That can’t happen if its against the law, right? Or do we need to make it much more illegaler to murder folks with a gun. That strategy has never worked in the past, but that also hasn’t stopped you all from trying anyway.
“This kind of mass shooting has become tragically common in the U.S.; what would be a rare horror in any other developed country is typical here. Yet the cause is no mystery. America has an enormous amount of guns, making it easier for someone to carry out a deadly shooting.” – NYT.
Do we have to play this stupid game again? The US isn’t unique in the world for violence, we are for gun ownership and population. Only two nations have more people than us, both have more people murdered than us. Both have super stringent weapons ownership policies yet still have more people murdered than us. We have, by an order of magnitude, the most privately owned weapons and yet we seem to manage pretty well. If we were then to start hash out where in our society these violent incidents are occurring… well… assumptive conclusions like ‘math is racist’ start getting thrown around.
Weird.
Oh wait, both India and China are ‘uncivilized’ in this version of the gun control argument, nevermind. They can’t be expected to behave.
California’s political and legislative responses to these events should stop being used as an example to emulate.
Accountant turned science-fiction author and well known Internet firearms bon-vivant Larry Correia spent some time last year penning his new book, In Defense Of The Second Amendment, which is due for public release Tuesday, January 24, with preorders arriving tomorrow. This book is Correia’s first non-fiction release, and includes a preface by actor Nick Searcy. Besides the preface, it has a conclusion and 7 different chapters in between for a total of 208 pages. Ten full pages in this book are dedicated to notes, citations and references–all in small print. Correia uses the insights and personal experiences he attained from his participation in several firearms related jobs. Among other things, he worked as a former high end gun dealer/007 FFL SOT, a self-defense/Utah concealed carry instructor, and as a competitive shooter. He uses these experiences in order to argue against the most common anti-gun rhetorical points and other areas of discussion as they pertain to this “national conversation about guns.”
In addition to the various firearms related jobs Correia has held, he has also been spending much of his life arguing for and defending the Second Amendment online–be it social media or his personal website. Tearing down arguments with laser-straight logic and sharp wit is something he has become quite good at, and this book does not hold back on either. Correia also intends for his readers to take advantage of this book and use it as a handy reference guide to help others make coherent and articulate arguments in favor of the Second Amendment. Frankly, the book is also a great read for people wary of firearms and the Second Amendment but are still genuinely curious and open minded about the topic. Ditto for fence sitters: the book would not be a waste of their time either. Be warned however, that Correia’s personal style of writing is one in which he holds nothing back and plenty of jokes and lampoonery are made at the expense of American left leaning politicians. (Correia does claim to be on his best behavior for this book and that “he toned it down”). Everything Correia wrote in this book is concise and easy to understand, but this will not read like a neutral academic paper.
A timely caption concerning one of the main governing agencies at the US Federal level that regulates firearms, the ATF.
In Defense Of The Second Amendment draws readers in with an explanation about the incident-tragedy cycle and all of its moving parts, especially the patterns of sensationalism and reactions by the media, the uninformed public, and politicians. Correia began writing the manuscript for this book during the summer of 2022, in the wake of the awful Uvalde, Texas school shooting in late May 2022. In Defense Of The Second Amendment is current and timely enough that it includes references to the Greenwood, Indiana mall shooting that was thwarted by a lawfully armed concealed carrier and other current events from last year as well. Correia spends a good portion of the book taking apart every classic gun control argument including magazine capacity, background checks, the gun show loophole, microstamping technology, waiting periods, ghost guns, red flag laws and the regulation of “assault weapons” in Chapter 4.
In Chapter 5, Correia also discusses more contemporary topics that entered the conversation within the last five to ten years like liability insurance for gun manufacturers and the practical implications of “literally banning and rounding up every single gun.” Personally, I am grateful that he dedicates several pages addressing the topic of red flag laws, known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders or ERPOs, as red flag laws have extremely dangerous implications for the country and its citizens. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all. Seasoned veteran gun control debaters will recognize and appreciate all the points Correia makes in his counter-arguments for gun control. For others (myself included), In Defense Of The Second Amendment is a great refresher. And once again, for those who are open minded, taking a look at Correia’s reasoning is productive; the point of this book is to inform its readers and then have those readers inform the people around them and maybe get them to start thinking about the Second Amendment topic in ways not spoon fed by the mass manipulative and largely hostile media.
The later parts of the book address other topics in the gun space, and it is in these pages where Correia not only provides explanations and background context into how some gun laws came to be, but useful solutions that may alleviate some of these problems as well. For example, Correia calls out the media on how it is dangerous to sensationalize mass shootings because these seem to spark copycat attacks following high profile violent incidents. Correia’s call to action implores readers to get involved and become ambassadors for the Second Amendment in their communities and to their friends and neighbors besides talking or sharing ideas. He wants readers to show those around them how useful and even fun shooting and enjoying firearms can be.
Outside of the courts, the Second Amendment and the topic of guns in our society is very much a cultural issue and a poor, struggling gun culture actually represents a great harm to our Second Amendment rights. This is something else Corriea points out and expands on. Chapter 7 is about the use of deadly force. All of the chapters in this book are important, but perhaps Chapter 7 may be the most important one; most of us carry or keep defensive firearms at home to protect ourselves, after all. I will quote one sentence from one of the paragraphs in Chapter 7.
“Once you have a fundamental understanding of how use of force laws are supposed to work, it is harder to be manipulated by the press.”
The ugly reality is that as Americans, we appear to be at odds with each other and media manipulation is like the bellows that make the fire burn hotter. Mistrust, disinformation and fake news all seem to be the focus today, and it is really taking a toll on our country and distracting us from moving forward and fixing things. Whether one leans left or right, whether they love or hate the author, if this book can at least set some facts straight about the gun topic, then it will have done its job.
[Ed: We have published this piece annually since 2015 for Bill of Rights Day each December 15. The Bill’s Second Amendment is the reason for our being, in more ways than one.]
Today we all should be jubilantly celebrating the 230th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the original 10 amendments to the United States’ federal constitution. Remarkably, it slips by relatively unremarked. Yet our Bill of Rights may actually be the most significant of our republic’s founding documents.
The Declaration of Independence announced our nationhood. The Constitution defined our government. The Bill of Rights confirms our liberty as free people who are not subservient to our government.
There is a lot wrong today that the authors of the Bill of Rights anticipated and meant to preclude. But the Framers knew that natural and civil rights, including these broad and individual ones that were defined so early on, are actually not worth the parchment they’re inked on. They’re worth what each generation holds they mean regardless of original intent. That’s how they’ve often become too loosely interpreted.
There was strong agreement among the Founders about the importance of these principles to a civil, democratic society and in their belief that they were codifying rights that were mostly pre-existent and inherent to the dignity of human beings. The conflict between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over whether to formalize these was about the impact of leaving unstated other rights “retained by the people” or “reserved to the states”. There was no disagreement about the importance of any of the rights for which the colonists had fought and died for.
Federalists worried that documenting any rights implied disregard for those not enumerated. Anti-Federalists feared that not including these in the Constitution would eventually make it easier to ignore them. Over 200 years later, it appears the Anti-Federalists showed the greater foresight on this question.
The Second Amendment (in James Madison’s original draft, beginning with “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”) is our particular concern here at Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership. Not just to protect the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, but also because this individual right is so basic to all other rights of Americans. It is, in St. George Tucker’s words, our “palladium of liberty”. Just having this enumerated right for individuals to own and use weapons makes us unique among nations.
One reason Americans have always seen ourselves as exceptional is because of the individual obligation for self-responsibility that is required by minimizing dependence on government. We’ve been realists since the first boots trod the Atlantic coast, taught by the frontier experience that we have to take care of ourselves.
We discovered that people have the right “to the pursuit of Happiness”, not to be made happy. We learned that we have the right, and therefore the duty, to protect ourselves because there is no right to be free from harm. If we do not comprehend these core truths, we become dependent on government for happiness and protection— according to others’ standards, not our own.
As Americans moved westward, they outpaced the advance of existing government, an unusual pattern throughout the hemisphere. Sometimes alone, often in scattered clusters of neighboring settlers, they had to meet their own needs. They were guided in establishing their own local authorities by the same traditions we look to today to understand our relationship to government that now envelops us.
That historical ethic of self-reliance without a safety net is a recent enough phenomenon to continue influencing our psyches. That’s good because this world, and too often our own part of it, is an unpredictable and dangerous place.
Accepting the responsibility to care for oneself, one’s families and fellow citizens must be at the heart of any successful society. A hard-nosed, far-sighted understanding of that reality is central to American history, coupled with our optimism and generosity.
This is why DRGO speaks out on behalf of our fellow citizens. We oppose professional and cultural group-think that would have us ask more what our country can do for us, than what we can do for ourselves and our country.
DRGO vouches for the capacity of people to do the right things for themselves and each other, even with powerful tools like firearms. If we don’t, we’ll lose our history, our liberty, and each other.
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— DRGO Editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
