If you’ve ever googled “how to carry while running,” you’re not alone. Many carry permit holders have to deal with the problem of carrying when they can’t wear a belt or traditional pants. The existing solutions, like belly bands, fanny packs, or off body carry aren’t great. Then along came the mad wizards at PHLster. Enigma isn’t a holster, it’s a chassis to carry your holster…in whatever clothes you like.
The folks at PHLster sent me an Enigma to review, so I immediately threw an LCR holster on it and put it on under my silkies. It worked so well that I could do kettle bell swings with a gun on for the first time with no discomfort. While that was a fun exercise, after living with Enigma for over a month I’ve come to a few conclusions about the chassis.
Yes, that’s a Colt Python in the Enigma. Yes, it’s concealable. No, you can’t have one.
What is Enigma?
First, let’s explain what it is, and what it does. The PHLster Enigma is designed to carry your “wing” equipped appendix carry holster without the need for an external belt or belt loops. It fits any non-light bearing holster that accepts common “wing-tuck” attachments, such as the PHLster Pro Series holster, the Dark Star Gear Orion, or the JM Custom Kydex Wing Claw 2.0. The holster attaches securely to Enigma’s face, and then the whole rig is secured around your waist with the included nylon belt and buckle system. The belt can be sized up or down depending on your body size. My 32 inch waist needed a lot of slack taken out of the belt, and then I trimmed the excess off. When you assemble the chassis, make sure to follow the video directions posted online.
Versatile CCW options for the real world
Thanks to the multiple attachment holes for setting up the belt, Enigma provides incredible versatility because it’s user adjustable for ride height and amount of butt-tuck. A high ride height for a gun makes it easy to draw quickly. Low ride height makes the gun easier to conceal. That means Enigma can be mission configured for your environment. Going for a run and want the gun fast and ready? Go high. Going into an environment where being “made” would have negative outcomes? Go low, or even entirely under the waistline, for max level concealment.
How people are using Enigma
Let’s look at some use cases for Enigma. Obviously, running/exercising is that forefront of my mind, because that’s a regular part of my life. Since getting the PHLster Enigma I’ve done several weighted rucks with a 35lb pack, and have not had any issues with the holster/band combo supporting a Beretta APX Centurion. But there’re a ton of other uses for it, like people who wear scrubs all day. In fact, one of the inventors of Enigma is a healthcare professional and this was one of the considerations when designing the product. Another great use case for Enigma is because it’s not attached to your belt or pants, you can tuck a shirt in over the entire gun, allowing you to wear business/professional/formal attire without relying on a jacket for concealment. Sure, your draw will be slower, but it beats not having anything on you at all.
JM Custom Kydex Wing Claw 2.0 holster attached to the PHLster Enigma with a Beretta APX Centurion
Carry more gun
One of the oddest side effects of Enigma is that I hardly carry small revolvers anymore. Previously, my “beltless carry” option was a J-frame or Ruger LCR in a holster with a DCC monoblock clipped to the waistband of my pants. Cinch the drawstring tight and it was…mostly okay. With the PHLster Enigma, I can carry the aforementioned APX Centurion, which holds 15+1 rounds of 9mm and conceal it as effectively as the small revolvers. Any time I can triple my ammo capacity without reducing my effective concealment is a win.
Game changing concealment option
Is the PHLster Enigma going to completely replace belts and holsters? Not for me. For other people it’s now their standard EDC, but for me I spend most of my days wearing jeans anyway, so a traditional belt/holster setup is still my go-to. However, what Enigma lets me do is replace all the belly bands and other crappy methods I had to carry a gun while I wasn’t wearing a belt. That’s a huge benefit, because now I don’t have to choose between “carrying a gun” or “wearing comfortable pants.” I can do both, and have 15 rounds of 9mm. If that’s not a game changer, I don’t know what is.
I just read a post upon the expanse of the interwebz that espoused the belief that a popular training drill was ‘Useless.’
The drill, the 10-10-10, also called “The Test”, is a fairly common one used among pistol shooters and trainers to evaluate themselves or their students respectively. The argument was, essentially, that because drills are a situational scalable training tool and because there are similar drills both higher and lower in difficulty that “The Test” was useless.
This ignores two critical points
A drill that cannot be scaled for individual/group skill or logistics isn’t very useful to begin with
A “Test” is an objective standard to take a measurement
We use that measure to determine a regimen for skill development, and/or whether or not we have confidence a certain level of proficiency can be expected
Also, “The Test” is not the only test you should be using
So the argument that the test is ‘useless’ is nonsensical. But what about obsolete? What about obsolescent?
That’s right folks, we are talking about words again.
So, you are the caliber of shooter that can easily clear “The Test” with 100/100 points earned. Excellent! The 10-10-10 drill, for you, is not useless, but it is obsolete. For you. You have progressed, or if you are an instructor taking a measure of your students they have progressed, to a different level of skill development and different tests may now provide more information to drive training on.
Dot Torture is a similar item where if you are shooting it clean at 3 yards, that variant of the test is now obsolete. Again, for you. For the majority of the shooting public these tests will never become obsolete, although they should strive to make them so.
So instead, you use your grey matter and make the drill into a ‘variant’ and do a 10-10-25. Or you are rounds limited (as are we all) and make it a 5-5-10 or 5-5-25. The first number being the number of rounds, the second being the number of allotted seconds to complete the drill, and the third being the distance in yards/meters to the target. You are using your head to make situational variations to the drill based on data you have. Data you collected from the 10-10-10, now or in the past, or a similar measurement taking test. This is the nature of measuring skill development.
Now, let’s take a look at it from another perspective
Is the venerable M16 rifle Obsolete, Obsolescent, or Useless? Specifically talking about the A4 variant pictured in the title, but you can use this analysis on any variant, or any firearm for that matter.
Both major ground force arms of the US Military have moved on from the M16. The Marines have opted for the M27 and M4 rifles while the Army has opted for the M4A1. The NGSW is also coming down the pipeline and we will address its implications here also.
The M16 has been removed from service as a ground combat rifle, it is therefore Obsolete
No, not obsolete. The M16A4 has been found suboptimal in the role because the limitations imposed by the longer barrel and fixed stock outweigh the advantages. But the rifles employed to replace the M16 with frontline forces can’t even be called the descendants of the M16, more like the younger siblings. As 5.56 service weapons go the M16 can still serve in the role exceptionally well, but certain features have been found more desirable and so selections were made and changes implemented.
My conceptual M16A5-I
Obsolete would mean that the M16 has been surpassed by a substantial margin in most meaningful ways that it offers something beneficial to the users. Instead, more realistically, we have found more preferred variations on the theme of the M16.
Namely
Adjustable Stocks
Shorter Barrels
Free Floating Barrels
Along with continual improvements in material quality and increased understanding in the efficiencies of making the guns run, we have surpassed the M16A4’s base offerings in most ways. But we have not done so to a substantial degree, only a marginal one.
Compare that with, say, the M1903 Springfield and the M16 clearly makes the 1903 obsolete. Also the M1 Garand and M14, although the M14 is the closest peer and meets the criteria of obsolescent instead.
All the features of the M16A4 have been surpassed, it is therefore Obsolescent
We are going to give this one another no… followed by a tentative maybe when we touch on the NGSW program.
Yes, the adjustable stocks and shorter freefloating barrels surpass the M16A4, but it would be very simple to also do two of those three improvements to the M16A4 and bring it right back into the modernized forefront. There would even be an arguable advantage to a 20″ freefloating barrel and the velocity it offers the shooter for effective range and terminal effects.
Obsolescent means that the newer iterations surpass the M16 in enough ways that you would choose the newer platform.
“But Keith, that sounds exactly like what you are saying between the M16A4 and the current rifles. Isn’t it?”
No.
And the reason comes down to caliber. 5.56x45mm is still the standard and that keeps the M16 among the “performs to the standard” group of rifles. Everything else is a small quality of use shift to the positive. Adjustable stocks better matching more shooter body types, shorter barrels allowing improved movement in tight confines, and freefloating improving both inherent and practical accuracy.
The M16 is still capable in all those categories though, until we change caliber. The NGSW specifying a 6.8mm ballistic efficient projectile with the openly stated goal of making the rifle effective to 1,000 meters will be the shift that makes the M16 obsolescent, by virtue of making the 5.56 start the slow walk to obsolescence.
However it will be advancing from powder burning, auto-loading, perhaps even projectile weapons entirely, that signals the shift to obsolete.
Again, I say the NGSW is a tentative maybe toward making the M16 obsolescent because we do not have hard data on the performance of the guns yet and ease of use comparatively. Troops will be taking an ammunition capacity hit and that is not an insignificant consideration. But the shift from 30 to 25 or 20 is not as drastic as back to 8, or 5 even, and losing the box magazine capabilities. The two leaps being sought in the NGSW are range and terminal effectiveness.
We do have to get soldiers shooting better though… significantly better. But people are working on that too.
Now the question with the obvious answer. Is the M16 “Useless?”
Obviously not.
But going back to the comment on the 10-10-10 drill, we like to throw that term around. The M16 is far from useless, the M14 isn’t useless, the M1 Garand and M1 Carbines are not useless, the M1903 isn’t useless.
Taken on the large scale, they all occupy the same superior place and are peers over non-repeating firearms, and those aren’t useless. Take those, including the single shots, and compare them against something like the crossbow, or bow and arrow, and those are not useless, but the firearm is superior. Adding those in, they all occupy the same superior niche of launched, mechanically or chemically, assisted projectile weapons over something thrown like a javelin. A javelin isn’t useless. But it is sure as hell obsolete compared to an M16.
While the video gaming aspect of this video is a lot of fun, I am actually sharing it point out the GP90 ammunition that the SG 550-1 is designed to use and the SG 550’s role in Switzerland, it’s nation of origin. Because that ammo is neat.
The Swiss culture around firearms is one of the more permissive in the world, especially on the European stage. They use a national militia structure where all of their young men, with women volunteers, are a conscripted part of the on call Swiss military and thus receive firearms training. The Swiss military functions much like the Reserve/National Guard here in the US, drilling on an abbreviated schedule.
Their issued rifle is the SG 550, a classic 80’s Sig from the Swiss arm of the company, and the ammunition they use is the GP90 5.6x45mm. This round is interchangeable with 5.56x45mm NATO ammunition, but is optimized for the native 1:10 twist barrels of the SG 550 rifles. SG 550’s with 1:7 barrels are also in circulation for use when integrated with NATO forces or for clients who had wanted the use of the Swiss rifle but the NATO standardization on ammunition. The slightly heavier and GP90 round does well in barrels and is an accurate 63gr lead core FMJ, instead of the 62gr SS109 Belgian round with steel under the jacket.
Recall that the 1:7 barrels were chosen not for the SS109/M855, but to accurize the companion M856 tracer, which is a much longer bullet. So 1:10 at 63gr does very well, just as 1:8 twist barrels become increasingly popular here in the states because the 55-77gr commercial loads that we shoot (or shot… RIP ammo availability) stabilize very well in that twist rate. We aren’t dealing with the long tail of the tracer rounds.
That isn’t to say 1:7 guns aren’t accurate, they are very accurate, but choices in equipment design were made for a reason and among those reasons was that the overly tight rifling rate wasn’t overly detrimental to the non-tracer ammunition while providing the needed stability for the tracers that slower twists didn’t.
So the 5.6×45 GP90 is a “5.56 NATO” round in function, the rifles can also shoot 55-77gr .223 Remington. Ammunition that is available to Swiss citizens to shoot their service rifles should they want, a common Swiss pastime and national competition.
But back to the 550-1
During the latter half of the 20th Century several terroristic and hostage incidents worldwide highlighted a need for a “Police” sniper rifle that, while precise, needed to operate in a very different manner from military weapons. The environment and mission goals were changed.
Where military snipers needed precision and observation power at distance and to be able to deliver damage on target to kill, wound, or disrupt enemy actions, the police sniper was/is a rescue tool. Police snipers worked at much shorter distances and with very complicated environments where there were often small moving targets next to hostages and with backstops that would not stop a missed shot, making it an increased hazard also. Rifles and rounds specialized for these environments were different animals than the 800, 1000, or 1400 meter effective range systems the military utilizes.
The 550-1 was a system intended to serve police in that role. It has since been overshadowed by the DMR concept guns that the military has utilized to great success, but with ammunition suited for the complex material environment of the police sniper. Systems evolve and as missions blend, gear does too. The role of the police precision rifle vs. the military precision rifle are still quite different, but the capability parallel and overlap is not.
The military precision rifle, the Mk12 or M110A1 DMR’s, allow a squad about a square (circular) mile of coverage where they can observe and deliver precise direct fire to disrupt enemy action. This could be offensive or defensive fire in nature and will almost certainly be used in combined arms to support to direct conventional infantry to engage at closer range and/or heavier supporting fires from CAS, IDF emplacements, or naval support.
The police precision rifle is for the more tailored mission where an individual might need to be shot to generate the best possible outcome and end a threat to the community, officers, or even the suspect themselves.
While taking place at much shorter ranges the environment is filled with intermediate obstacles, not all of which can be removed. Glass, vehicle panels, even thin walls might all need to be shot through. These intermediate barrier scenarios are often a reason semi-autos are a valuable tool. One round takes care of the barrier and the second or subsequent rounds deliver the effect on target, which may not be lethal as seen above. It does, however, require precision.
A missed round in combat happens, follow up, you are disrupting enemy action and driving the enemy. A missed round in a police action may trigger the absolute opposite outcome from intended, and may do so in very short order. That isn’t to say military snipers will never be in a situation where positive first round effect on target is essential, but in police action it is almost exclusively first round must have desired effect and, if planned, follow on rounds also.
The military sniper or DM does tremendous damage with a low round count. The police sniper does the absolute minimum amount of damage necessary to achieve the desired outcome. Sometimes both of those situations require doming someone.
I spent a couple hours in the dark last Friday evening. Actually not totally in the dark, because I was prepared. That’s what I wanted to talk about today.
It was just about dusk when the lights at home flickered three times and went out. There was a few minutes of twilight left, which gave me time to gather my back-up lights and start planning – after the first second or two of profanity that is.
I reported the outage and then logged onto social media to my neighborhood page to see how widespread things were. I learned that there had been a wreck down the road which took out a transformer. Hopefully that meant that this was a short-term inconvenience rather than a days-long problem. But I was still prepared for either.
I still had my battery operated Christmas candles sitting out, which had come on automatically on a timer, so one of those is what I took to the bathroom with me and to grab my other back-ups.
I am a freak about open flames in the house and will only light a candle if it is sitting on top of my stove with no flammables nearby. That’s why the battery candles. But that also meant that I had a ready supply of light available within easy reach. These pillar “candles” run on two D-cells and are LED, so I haven’t changed the batteries since they arrived around Thanksgiving.
A “candle” is good for background light enough to maneuver around a room or to see down the stairs (or to the bathroom). But how about something more powerful?
The next thing I grabbed was the bright LED solar flashlight that I keep charging in the kitchen window. I keep it there in case I need to check out anything in the backyard. Also always charging in the window is a solar power bank for my phone and a solar inflatable lantern.
My solar back-ups
Those are in addition to the flashlights I keep by the bedside, by the microwave, the Surefire I keep in the car, the camping lanterns that are in the basement and the headlamp I keep in my hunting pack.
Since the porch light was obviously out and my daughter was not yet home, I placed the inflatable solar lantern on the porch to light her way to put the key in the lock.
I checked the charge on my phone and on the e-reader I was using when the lights first went out. Those were good for awhile, so I didn’t need my solar charger yet. I checked my large power bank that I would need to plug the fridge into if things went on too long, and that was good too.
So I relaxed a little and went back to my e-book, content in the knowledge that things were under control. The lights came back on about 3 hours later.
Bear in mind that I don’t pretend to be an expert in any of this stuff. I don’t live in a hurricane zone and have never lived through an extended power outage. But I do try to keep myself prepared – short of shelling out the cash for a whole house generator that is. Short outages like this give me an opportunity to test my plans.
For the winter I have a gas furnace, but the blower and igniter are electric, as is the thermostat. I don’t have a fireplace, but I do have a gas stove and oven which I can hand light to generate heat. I also have a small propane-powered space heater which is approved for indoor use. And I have a plan for how I would seal off unneeded parts of the house to keep the heat in the kitchen/living room area where I would sleep. It wouldn’t be balmy but it would allow me to stay in my own home and not have to bail out to elsewhere.
For the summer I have a rechargeable fan which I can plug into one of my solar power banks. Also in the summer I can cook on the propane grill or Silverfire Rocket Stove outside to keep the cooking heat out of the house.
The average full freezer should be good for 48 hours without power if unopened, but the average fridge is only good for about four hours. Thus you need to plan for ice chests or an alternate power source in the event of an extended outage – especially if anyone in your family requires refrigerated medication.
I sprang for a solar rechargeable power supply last summer which was advertised to be able to run a full-size refrigerator. I haven’t needed to try it out yet, but the reviews were good from people in hurricane country. My plan is to alternate it between the chest freezer in the basement and the fridge/freezer in the kitchen, with the solar panels placed at the south-facing kitchen slider or deck for recharging when needed. At least that’s the plan.
Solar rechargeable power supply
Fortunately, because I was prepared and because this outage was short, it didn’t turn into a major problem. But one never knows when a storm will take out local lines or even major regional towers as happened 20-some years ago. That one left some family members without power for three weeks in January in upstate New York.
You just never know. So if you don’t have a plan for an extended power outage, you should probably make one. Mother Nature (and random drivers) are not always predictable.
[Ed: Republished by permission of the author, from Bearing Arms 12/30/2020.]
What did the Founding Fathers think about our right to keep and bear arms? According to historian Saul Cornell, founders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison would be far more likely to side with Everytown for Gun Safety than the National Rifle Association if they were alive today, because in Cornell’s view, the early republic was chock full of restrictions on gun owners.
In a new piece at The Conversation, Cornell lays out five types of gun laws that he says the Founders wholeheartedly embraces, starting with gun registration laws.
Today American gun rights advocates typically oppose any form of registration – even though such schemes are common in every other industrial democracy – and typically argue that registration violates the Second Amendment. This claim is also hard to square with the history of the nation’s founding. All of the colonies – apart from Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania, the one colony in which religious pacifists blocked the creation of a militia – enrolled local citizens, white men between the ages of 16-60 in state-regulated militias. The colonies and then the newly independent states kept track of these privately owned weapons required for militia service. Men could be fined if they reported to a muster without a well-maintained weapon in working condition.
What Cornell is describing isn’t a registration of privately owned firearms, and he provides no evidence whatsoever that the various colonies actually kept track of the rifles and muskets owned by militia members. Cornell is correct when he says that those mustering for militia service could face fines if their firearm wasn’t well maintained, but that has nothing to do with any sort of registration or list of guns in the hands of private citizens.
Next, Cornell claims that the Founders loved the idea of restricting the right to carry. For this argument, Cornell reaches way back to English common law and claims that there was no “general right of armed travel” at the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment. Were there any actual bans on traveling while armed? Cornell doesn’t cite any specific examples, though he is correct when he points out that by the mid-1800s many states had either banned or limited the practice of carrying concealed. What he doesn’t point out is that by attempting the manner of carrying arms, those same lawmakers were tacitly acknowledging a more general right to carry.
The Fordham University historian also argues that the Founders would also have been opposed to “stand your ground” laws, even though the Castle Doctrine had been a part of common law for centuries by that point.
The use of deadly force was justified only in the home, where retreat was not required under the so-called castle doctrine, or the idea that “a man’s home is his castle.” The emergence of a more aggressive view of the right of self-defense in public, standing your ground, emerged slowly in the decades after the Civil War.
I’m honestly not sure where Cornell gets the idea that deadly force was only justifiable in the home. I can think of one very famous case from the 1770s where that wasn’t the case. Most of the British soldiers who opened fire on a crowd of angry Bostonians who were throwing chunks of ice and razor-sharp oyster shells at them on March 5th, 1770 were ultimately found not guilty of murder because a jury found that they were acting in self-defense (two others were convicted of manslaughter).
Cornell goes on to claim that the Founders were on board with storage laws, based solely off of a 1786 ordinance in Boston that required guns had to be kept unloaded. His last assertion is that “the notion that the Second Amendment was understood to protect a right to take up arms against the government is absurd. Indeed, the Constitution itself defines such an act as treason.”
To wage an offensive war against the United States is indeed treason, as defined by Article III of the Constitution. To take up arms in defense of a tyrannical federal government, on the other hand, was most certainly acknowledged as a right of the people by the Founding Fathers. Here’s James Madison writing in Federalist 46.
Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.
Saul Cornell has likely forgotten more history than I’ll ever know, but he’s off-base in asserting that the Founding Fathers embraced the idea of restricting the right to keep and bear arms. There’s simply no evidence to support the idea that the laws pushed by gun control activists today, like bans on commonly-owned firearms or magazines; gun licensing; gun rationing; or bans on carrying firearms would have found favor with the Founders or the early Americans who argued against ratifying the Constitution until a Bill of Rights was included and the pre-existing right of the people to keep and bear arms was protected.
The Brand New Vortex SPARC SolAR.. Sol-ARE.. or maybe Sol-A-R. I am not entirely sure if they intended a different pronunciation than solar power or solar system but they emphasis on the platform is noted. This is a carbine dot meant to do carbine dot work.
The new Vortex is entering a crowded field, something that the original SPARC didn’t have to contend with. When the original SPARC came out, the market was just beginning to notice and acknowledge a middle ground for red dot optics at all. I’ve had the SPARC for a couple months. I received a pre-release production unit for Vortex to get my thoughts on it and now that I’ve shared my thoughts with them, I will share them with you.
So what does the SPARC Solar do that other competing sights don’t do?
Nothing…
Seriously, nothing.
But the SPARC wasn’t meant to. That wasn’t the goal with this sight.
So what was the goal?
First, let’s take a look at the “King of the Red Dot’s”
Aimpoint’s CompM5
What does this dot, the Aimpoint CompM5 do?
A: It is a durable, power efficient, 2 MOA optic with manual brightness control. That’s it.
So what does the SPARC Solar do?
It is a durable, power efficient, 2 MOA optic with manual brightness control.
Seen on a Scalarworks mount and paired with an EOTech Magnifier, the Vortex SPARC Solar on an LWRCi M6 PSD
The SPARC Solar is supplemented by solar power for a very long battery endurance. It’s environmentally durable and not recoil sensitive. Now you can’t deep water dive with this like you could with the CompM5 but you can trip and fall in a pond or stream and it will be just fine.
We know there are varying degrees of durability to optics.
‘Hobby‘ Grade would describe something that will survive if treated with care, generally very inexpensive
Will not stand up to harsh use or impacts
Best used as stand-in, prop, or toy (airsoft, nerf, laser tag)
‘Duty‘ grade is probably the most broadly assigned, and thus the most vague term, but it is used to describe durable and dependable optics for what we will call ‘permissive’ environments
Optics can stand up to harsh use like a multi-day course, multi-stage match, or similar use
Optics can get wet, dirty, and be dropped moderate distances or fallen on with little concern of rendering it unusable
Optic and associated rifle are stored in a maintenance permissive environment and can be given care in short order
Optic and associated rifle are not exposed to harsh elements for long durations, stored in a police cruiser or building even while ‘in use’ is a good example.
‘Military‘ grade is also an often abused term, but in this context it describes an optic hardened beyond duty grade to survive ‘non-permissive’ environments, it otherwise holds the traits of a ‘Duty’ optic
Hardened for use away from easy access to maintenance
Optic may see nothing more than a dry brush and a fresh battery for months
Hardened for longer term exposure to harsh elements like snow, sand, mud, and water
Often includes an extreme depth rating for water-proofing, optics with this are truly submersible and can be safely taken underwater for arrival or egress and at much higher water pressures
Optic’s surface and controls keep longer term exposure in mind when picking coatings, finishes, and treatments
Putting about a chest of gold doubloons worth of ammunition under it (at today’s prices not as much as I wanted or would normally) I found the Vortex SPARC SolAR to have
No wandering zero
Not recoil sensitive to hard shock from piston guns (SCAR17, AK Ultimak Rail) or heat from the sustained fire rate of running rifle drills.
Emitter doesn’t star or blur with my astigmatism, something I am noticing from newer LED’s in good optics.
The Vortex SPARC Solar is solidly ‘Duty‘ grade.
Physically, the SPARC Solar is another T1/T2 footprint dot
It can be low mounted for guns like the AK with an Ultimak tube or an MP5. It can be mounted in the 1.6-1.9″ mount height range that is popular with AR’s and it’s peer group of rifles too. I’ve got in riding on a Scalarworks ‘Lower 1/3’, but the SPARC Solar comes with mounting hardware for both a low base and “lower 1/3” mounting solution in the box. It will also support being offset on any T1/T2 pattern option.
The control surface is a horizontal pad with a +/-
Clicking either button will turn the SPARC Solar on, and holding either button for a few seconds will turn it off. Again, simple. There’s a theme here.
SPARC Solar on an RA XCR-L, note the divided brightness control pad. The logo on solar panel is a neat touch.
The turrets are uncapped and recessed slightly. Capped turrets are an either love it or hate it feature for many, personally I don’t like misplacing turret caps. The clicks are positive and the recess should be enough to protect from most inadvertent adjustments.
The adjustments are 1 MOA, instead of the industry standard .5 MOA, we will cover more on that in a minute.
The battery cap is a knurled affair for a CR2032, which it does come with. The cap also comes featuring a nice pair of retained lens covers that can stack onto the cap itself while you are using the sight. If you, like I, prefer not to use them you can pull the caps off with their rubber retention ring from around the battery cap to store in your bag or wherever is convenient.
The SPARC Solar’s utility is in its simplicity
2 MOA Dot
The SPARC Solar does not use the multi-reticle system of some of its direct competitors. It isn’t a necessary feature. It is a feature that drastically changes the battery drain rates on those sights that do use it.
Manual Brightness Adjustment
Automated brightness, whether by fiber optic like the ACOG or with a sensor of some sort, has never worked out as well as we would like. Most users will opt for the manual modes, even if automatic is offered. The SPARC Solar uses the solar cell for power augmentation only.
1 MOA Adjustments
While the industry standard is .5 MOA, 1 MOA significantly simplifies the zeroing process. It does so by simplifying the factional math a shooter must do as part of the zeroing process.
4 Clicks = 1 inch at 25 yards/meters 2 Clicks = 1 inch at 50 yards/meters 1 Click = 1 inch at 100 yards/meters
All roughly speaking. Adjust until you group is centered at the desired distance.
Additionally, using the new US Army M16/M4 Series Zero target will give you a precise 1 Click = 1 Box of movement adjustment, at 25 meters.
Keep in mind a proper offset when using this target, unless you truly want point of aim point of impact at 25m for something like a 9mm carbine
This change to 1 MOA doesn’t compromise the available precision from the optic. Each click will move the dot only half the width or height of the dot, and that is when the SPARC Solar is turned down to minimum visible brightness for lighting conditions. This on a platform that will, at realistic best, be shooting a 1.5 to 4 MOA group to adjust from.
Realistically, .5 MOA adjustments are overly precise for red dot optics in the same way that .1 Mil adjustments are on LPVO non-precision platforms. They don’t increase the gun’s precision, just the number of clicks to zero it.
Trijcon’s HRS RMR (For the M17/M18) uses the same 1 MOA adjustment and it works out very well as an offset rifle optic, a very viable option for the SPARC Solar as well.
Shake Awake
Shake Awake technology was one I was hesitant about when it first started popping up a few years ago, it seemed like a failure point for a gimmick. Now having seen, and own currently, several optics with it, and never having turned any of them off, I am convinced they have it working fine.
Speaking on the Trijicon HRS RMR again for a moment, it uses a parallel but different concept for battery endurance. Instead of shaking awake, it goes into an automated brightness sensing mode after several hours and will dim the dot as ambient light dims. This makes it power efficient in the dark while keeping the brightness around an appropriate level for lighting conditions in the environment.
Hitting the + or – on the HRS switches it to manual for specific brightness, it stays in manual for 16.5 hours after the last adjustment. It then defaults to automated again.
It is fairly complicated but I see where Trijicon was coming from (and it was a Military contract optic)
Both methods have merits for power conservation and battery endurance. The shake awake is more basically intuitive, it simply turns on again at the last power setting. User can then adjust for conditions. The auto-adjust function of the HRS is more ‘environmentally prepared,’ perhaps is the term, for use at a given lighting condition, but that isn’t perfect and may need to be adjusted for conditions anyway.
Neither is perfect, but I feel shake awake encourages the user to actively check their optic for conditions and make adjustments more than the automated system, which could inure complacency. I have and use both systems, I am more endeared to the shake awake.
Conclusion: Less is More
The Vortex SPARC Solar offers the foundational frame of what we want out of a modern red dot sight. If you aren’t springing for a CompM5 and you don’t need the multi-reticle system, the Solar is very much worth your consideration.
Last week we took a first look at the Heritage Manufacturing Barkeep; this week we take it to the range. What’s the Barkeep like to shoot? It’s fun.
BLUF: The Barkeep is fun and affordable
Here’s the truth about the Heritage Barkeep: all you need to know is that it’s fun to shoot and it costs less than $200. I can tell you about how the sights are, I can tell you that it shoots decent groups, I can tell you that the safety is easy to activate, but none of that matters. The Barkeep is fun, and it’s less than $200. I don’t feel like I need to go into more detail than that.
Loading and unloading the Heritage Barkeep
But since people, especially gun people, like to read about guns, let’s talk about the Barkeep on the range. The first thing we’ll talk about is the fiddly loading and unloading. How is it? It’s fine. If you’ve ever loaded a single action revolver it won’t bother you, you need to remember to keep the provided punch in your range bag so you don’t forget it. With my sample, if I held the Heritage Barkeep vertically and gave it a good shake, I could usually get 4 of the rounds to fall out. I’d almost always need the punch for one.
A safety on a single action?
Alright, let’s talk about the Barkeep’s safety. I…had my reservations. Who puts a safety on a single action gun? That seems crazy to me, but it’s there, so let’s figure out how to use it. Turns out, it’s really easy to use. If you’re using a two handed grip on the gun, your support hand thumb falls naturally on top of the safety and makes clicking it off and on pretty simple. If you go true cowboy style and shoot it with one hand, your dominant thumb can flick it off then hit the hammer really easily. It’s easy to use, and not something I consider a detriment at all. However! I just don’t use it and load the gun with five, using the load one skip one load four method.
But how does the Heritage Barkeep shoot?
The Barkeep is pretty accurate. I shot it side by side with another 22 Magnum single action wheelgun, an old EAA Bounty Hunter with a 4 5/8ths inch barrel, and the Barkeep kept up in the accuracy department. All of the 22 Magnum rounds hit below the sights with the Barkeep. This is because the sights are regulated for 22 Long Rifle, which is going considerably slower than 22 Mag, even out of this short gun. You can fix that by either shooting 22 LR exclusively, or relaxing and enjoying the gun in 22 Magnum. The sights are fine for what they are. If you want a more accurate revolver, Heritage has a 6.5 inch single action with adjustable rear sights and a fiber optic front. That would be a great choice for a 22 Magnum hunting pistol.
Bottom line…on the bottom line
However, the most important question about the Heritage Barkeep is whether or not it’s fun. I’ve already said this, and I’ll say it again. Yes. It’s stupid amounts of fun. In a world of soulless striker fired 9mm pistols, boring 22 LR autoloaders, and identical carbines, the Barkeep stands out from the pack. It looks cool, it’s an honest hoot to shoot, and it’s less than $200. If you want one, definitely buy it.
Pistol red dots are a significant innovation in the combat pistol game. They are in no way new, and you can find numerous examples going back decades. What’s changed is that the latest trend is focusing on concealed carry and duty guns. Prior to that, the pistol red dot was regulated mostly to ‘Open’ series competition guns. In the last few decades, we found a way to mount smaller red dots in less intrusive methods.
Today, we are talking all about mounting pistol red dots and which systems work best.
The ‘Worst’ Way – Dovetail Mount
The Dovetail mount is a plate or even section of rail that replaces your rear sight with a base to mount optics. Most of these dovetail mounts suck. If it’s on Amazon and costs 19 bucks, you can assume it sucks.
Avoid these mounts
There are a few inherent issues with using a dovetail to mount a pistol red dot. The first is the height. The dot will be taller and the gun taller.
This is crap my guys.
Second dovetail mounts replace your rear sight and eliminate your ability to use a rear sight. The cheaper designs are prone to bend and break when pressure is applied in nearly any direction. This throws the dot off.
This is not crap (Courtesy of Dueck Defense)
There are only two no-mill dovetail pistol red dot mounts I’d trust, and that’s the Dueck Defense model and the Raven Concealment Balor mount. Both of these are sturdy and incorporate a rear and front sight for backups. The two issues with these mounts are the height and the cost. The Dueck is around 130 bucks, and the Balor is around 200. For that cost, you could have your slide milled. But if you don’t want to mill, they work.
The Better Way – Plate System
The Glock MOS system introduced a factory means to allow shooters to accommodate a wide variety of pistol red dot optics. The idea is that a shooter can purchase a Glock MOS and use a dozen different types of red dots by swapping mounting plates. The mounting plates allow the Glock to accommodate various optic footprints. The base slide has a universal footprint to attach the various plates to. S&W has something similar with the CORE series.
The Glock MOS Series works okay
This is probably the best quasi-universal option on the market. If you were on the fence or just wanted to try a red dot enhanced handgun, then the CORE or MOS might be the best option to experiment with. The CORE and MOS systems work but do have a few small issues. The slide + plate + optic means the sight is higher.
The G48 MOS system is different and without plates.
Second, there is a set of screws that attach the plate to the gun then a set that attaches the optic to the plate. That’s four potential failure points. The Glock plates have also been known to bend and warp, but luckily the aftermarket is producing better plates that are less likely to warp. A small but very annoying issue is screw length. A screw too long will bend the plate, and a screw too short will not hold the optic to the gun.
The Weird Way – Frame Mounted
Frame-mounted pistol red dot optics are nothing new. This was the competitive solution way back in the day when C-More sights were as small as it got. Companies like ALG made solutions like the 6-second mount that attaches to the rail and then to the frame and allows you to mount an Aimpoint Micro to your Gen 3 Glock. This was a purpose-built solution for a Counter-Terrorism unit according to ALG and proved to be a very stable and reliable platform for mounting a red dot.
Other frame mounted system allow various optic’s options for SIG, 1911, CZ type pistols, and beyond. These systems do not reciprocate with the slide so tracking the dot is exceptionally easy to do. The lack of riding on the reciprocating slide may even extend the optic’s life.
These systems have been used extensively by pro-competitive shooters, and while they work, they also have a few issues.
First, they are massive and semi-complicated to install. They tend to also be expensive and often require a professional touch to install. These systems eliminate concealment options and leave you with minimal holster choices. Oh, and of course, the optic tends to be quite high.
The Best Way – Milled Slides
The very best way to attach a pistol red dot to your gun is the purchase a milled slide or have your own slide milled. There are tons of good companies out there these days that are doing some outstanding work in the world of red dot milling. As long as you choose a quality custom shop, you’ll experience the best pistol red dot fit possible.
A Jagerwerks Custom Glock
Slide mounted options sink the optic low and reduce failure points. Attachment is easier, and this has become the industry standard for a good reason. Milled slides provide you the most stable, lowest profile, and least complicated system for mounting pistol red dots. Even price-wise, this can be an affordable option. Brownells own RMR cut Glock slide can be had for under 200 bucks.
If you are looking for good companies, then you can’t go wrong with Jaegerworks, ATEi, or Primary Machine are all well respected for their slide milling capabilities if you choose to take that route.
Pistol Red Dot Optics Options
Pistol red dots are most certainly becoming mainstream, and these days optic’s compatibility is quickly becoming the standard. SIG, FN, Glock, S&W, Walther, CZ, and more are making their newest guns optic’s ready off the bat. The Pistol red dot is here to stay, and if it’s a route you want to take, make sure you approach it with a little bit of know-how to make your choice. Your choices and experiences may vary, but after numerous bits of experimentation, the above is what I’ve found to be true.
“We build Marksmen”. A phrase coined by two men who went to work each day living by another phrase, “one shot one kill”. With precision rifle growing immensely around the country, and our U.S. Army Sniper School curriculum getting more advanced each year, there is a vast amount of knowledge that needs to be shared between two very separate entities. CR2 Shooting Solutions wants to bridge that gap between civilian and military precision shooting.
The Beginning of CR2 Shooting Solutions
CR2 shooting solutions was started by two former U.S. Army Sniper School instructors that had a desire to spread the knowledge that they have gained to those outside of their sniper community. Christopher Roberts and Christopher Rance, founders of CR2 Shooting Solutions, arrived at sniper school and got certified around the same time. They worked together on advancing the curriculum and competed at various precision rifle matches, such as Mammoth Sniper Challenge and overseas at the Isreali Sniper Competition, ultimately taking back various marksmanship techniques to the states.
Building a strong foundation with students at U.S. Army Sniper School
Through their time in the precision rifle community, Roberts and Rance saw great instructors teach current information while also seeing one track minded instructors teaching old instruction from aging military programs. The need for a course with current information that can create well rounded students was there.
Meet the Instructors
Christopher Roberts Throughout his 18 years in the Army, Roberts performed sniper operations both domestic and globally. Ending his Army career as a Sniper Instructor, he then moved to advising the Army on current and future weaponry and tactics that will advance us on the future battlefield.
Christopher Rance In Rance’s 17 years in the Army he has served in many facets of sniper leadership, instructed students from different branches and law enforcement entities, including foreign allies, and authored Sniper TC 3-22.10. Throughout his career serving as a Sniper Instructor in the Army he has been awarded Best Instructor of the Cycle numerous times. Rance has also worked with Kestrel Ballistics as a Military Field Consultant.
Assistant Instructors Scott Peterson, Jeremy Frazier
Classes look to be pretty plentiful with more being added to the schedule. See the schedule here.
Classes can also be tailored to the individuals within the class. For example, recently CR2 held a LE Designated Marksman course due to the students employing their weapons in a LE DM application which can use very different techniques than Mil snipers or civilians.
What Does a Student Need to Bring
One thing that this class may do that many won’t is focus on the gas guns that we know and love. The precision rifle market has made bolt action precision rifles the highlight of most courses and matches. Gas gun matches, that companies like Quantified Performance give us, showcase the capabilities of the AR-15/AR-10 type rifles. CR2 Shooting Solutions also wants to expose you to those capabilities, those that you may not have known your rifle could achieve.
QP Homepage
With that being said, here is what you will need at the minimum for a 2-3 day class from CR2 shooting solutions.
Any rifle that can hold 1.5 MOA. This means that your rifle can shoot and repeat a 1 1/2 inch group at 100m.
Two magazines
Scope with mil/moa turrets
Rear bag
200 rounds of match ammunition
Eye and ear protection
Ballistic solver (a kestrel will be provided at the class but your ballistic app will also work)
Due to the current state of affairs and ammunition issues don’t be afraid to reach out to CR2 if you’d like to take their course but are having issues with the equipment list.
Previous Classes/AAR
When asking about how the previous courses went Roberts stated, “Our last class was held at Arena Training Facility in November, 9-11th. It went off to great success. Students ranged from beginning shooters, competitors, and active duty military.”
A previous class going over rifle set-up.
Who Should Go/What Disciplines?
“All shooters and disciplines are encouraged to go to the course and walk away with an increased skillset.” -Christopher Roberts That statement shows that this course wants to build a foundation within any type of shooter. Roberts goes on to talk about how many shooters are thrown into higher skilled shooting styles such as barricade work without obtaining a foundation that can help them in all scenarios. CR2 wants to build shooters that don’t let their equipment allow them to get away with shots, or only know how to “game” a type of stage. Build a foundation, learn your shot process, call your shots, know the wind calls so well to that you can make that first round impact. If you have a foundation that sets you up to advance in those areas you can make impacts in any application. Beginners, hunters, competition shooters, Mil/LE, all are welcome.
TC 3-22.10 Authored by former Sniper Instructor and CR2 Instructor Christopher M. Rance
The Goal
“We want to build marksman and what a marksman is, is a shooter who knows how to properly set up their weapon system; who can group, zero and confirm at distance; who can build a profile and extrapolate data and build a hard data chart; who knows the shot process and who can build a foundation and can read, assess and call wind down to +\- 2 mph.”- Christopher M. Rance
The term standard was brought up many times when talking with CR2. They want to create a standard within the precision rifle world. The Goal of CR2 Shooting Solutions is to give you the training to engage in any form, any environment, any stressors, any equipment, and impact your target. Because well.. that’s the standard that a true marksman should strive for each day.
I want to circle back to Josh & Henry’s live stream, this video is longer, nearly two hours so be certain you have a moment to sit and listen. Vlad Onokoy, a notable Russian in firearm circles, joins the team to talk about the embassy evacuation problem.
I discussed my thoughts here. The Personal Security Detail evacuation plan.
This is the most real world relevant scenario I’ve seen come across the ‘Pick One’ format. While the format is for fun and educational purposes, it spurs discussion and gets the wheels turning, this particular scenario has real world applications for the average viewer, even if the level of firearms experience you currently have is limited to your concealed carry class and relevant range time.
Why?
Evacuating a VIP, or VIP’s, doesn’t change much tactically from evacuating your family. Taking into consideration that you are (probably) the only shooter and the one for whom the burden of making those life or death calls may rely on, this is an important thought exercise in its modified format.
How would you evacuate your family/those you are responsible for, from a violent and hostile environment?
If you’re thinking riots, so am I. 2020 was a banner year for them and you don’t know where the next “Autonomous Zone” is going to pop into existence. Having a plan to move your people, and logistically support that move, is a good thing. Having plans for both short term and long term moves is a good thing.
Are you getting your mother out of down town because things are getting hot in her neighborhood for a night or two? Or is this something where mom and dad are essentially moving somewhere else? Maybe you’re going in to get your sister and her young kids and she doesn’t believe in all this tactical Timmy stuff you do and think about and watch videos on, but here we are now. Husband has a J-Frame in the sock drawer lock-box, “for protection” since you two talked about it but he never took steps following the safety trail into competence, magic talisman theory, so he’s about useless for protection in a scenario as scary as civil chaos.
After the year 2020, and as we look to a troubling 2021, these are more than just thought experiments to flex the fat between your ears. These may be plans you have to implement because someone you care for, that you are responsible for, needs to be removed from somewhere bad.
This could be any number of reasons, and it might not (hopefully won’t) be “13 Hours, Heavily Armed Group of ‘Operators’ ” type of moving your family/friends so much as a “Let’s go, get in the van/truck/SUV” and the stuff for more hostile social interactions stays tucked away safely while your people ride with you to a safe location. Hell, young kids might never know if you pull it off right. Imagine pulling them out late at night to get away from whatever but safe locations are next to a waterpark, you just covered an escape as a surprise vacation and kept mental health (especially for the kids) in proper order.
The “3-Day” Evac Plan
If you are looking for a place to start, start here.
The most useful variation on this theme is the short-term evacuation. You leave the area for a few days and will return. You can also stretch 3 days worth of clothing very easily with wash facilities.
Encourage your important people to keep a ‘3-Day‘ bag packed.
Clothes for 3 days, double up on socks/undies
At least one good layer of environmental protection
Hot/Cold
Wet/Dry
Hygiene
Spare durable footwear
Power considerations: Cords & Chargers
Have this list handy (even if just in memory) so you can help pack it with them, because some aren’t going to listen. You can’t predict who this will be relevant with or when.
Know that you are going to be herding lost scared puppies, even if they were formally adults
You are now responsible for checking everything
One of the easiest ways to check is have the list and make everyone show you. Ye Old Military Inspection style.
Keep calm, heard the puppies
High likelihood that adults will be more scared than the kids, the adults have a grasp of what is happening and are not prepared. The kids are blissfully ignorant. You can use both to your advantage to herd your folks out.
Calm efficient movement is always faster than loud, excited, or panicky fearful. Excitement overwhelms and overwhelmed people make mistakes, often
If this sounds like packing for a generic vacation minus the swimsuits… it is, basically. Heck, pack the swimsuits
We are talking about moving people out of a localized problem spot to a safe place with modernized resources
They will have power, food, communication, maybe even room service and distractions for the good of their mental state
With what they brought with them they should be able to sustain 3-Days will minimal additional effort and upwards of a few weeks with laundry service and modern resources.
I double up my use of my 3-Day bag as my generic travel bag. When I go somewhere, it is already packed to come with me with almost everything I need.
Going for business? Add appropriate suit.
Going for class? Add the range bags.
Last second adventure or casual trip to anywhere for just about any reason? Grab and go. It’s not just an “incase of emergency bugout” item, it is a practical piece of consistently used gear. Plus that keeps the clothes inside it constantly checked on and clean after each trip. It’s something I see in rotation so it gets checked and updated.
This is not your old budget ambi-charging handle. Aero Precision has decided to ‘breach’ (yeah I did that, +1 dad joke point) the market of premium charging handles where three names heretofore reigned supreme.
The BREACH is a dual latch 7075-T6 offering, in both large lever and small lever configurations for AR-15’s and AR-10 types that match their M5 (SR-25/DPMS, not the SIG716) rifles. A robust simple design that does away with the thin drop in latches of earlier days, the BREACH follows the market standardization of offering end users the two latch configurations. One with a larger profile for easy one handed manipulations from either shoulder with either hand and one with a more reduced profile to minimize snagging or other interference against gear while still allowing one handed charging handle use.
This isn’t a new ground breaking concept, it is a market expansion of a proven one. And since I haven’t seen a BCM ambi in a blue moon, one the market can use with demand so high.
Discriminatory practices against the firearms and self defense community are nothing new. They are not so subtly covered in the nebulous policies of social media companies and their sharing software user agreements. You cannot post this, or post that, because it goes against our “Community Standards” in some manner.
Now, I am not saying a platform shouldn’t have standards. They should, they must, they should have the freedom and empowerment within their sphere to remove a beheading video titled, “What All Men Deserve,” or a post depicting a sexual assault saying “Women Get What They Earn,” or a solicitation for child pornography, or a solicitation to traffic that child.
The reality of social media has a dark and venomous under-dungeon that most users with a run of the mill “flagged post” don’t see. Most of us don’t see it because moderators catch the truly “WTF!?!” stuff early on and it generally circulates in small ‘interested’ circles. That vile venom, plus the clear tech political lean, plus zealous algorithmic automation, means that your meme gets tagged, flagged, and removed even if probably didn’t violate a ‘community standard,’ because they would rather not take the chance.
Because the 2A community is constantly speaking about the topic of violence (that’s the point) the fact that we run afoul of posted standards (sometimes genuinely, sometimes not) is par for the course. This is the nebulous realm of mass communication. That is social media.
But what about something foundational? Like Commerce?
Caleb posted this morning about the PLCAA, The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. This shields companies like Aero Precision, SIG Sauer, or anyone else who makes or trades in arms, ammunition, and related goods from being sued into oblivion just because one of the products they made was used criminally.
It does not protect any of them from willful negligence, it doesn’t dissolve their liability for making an unsafe or faulty product, it doesn’t protect them if they made a social media post saying “Its time to take it back” and that was put over a field of people charging the Capitol Building or the White House with rifles in their hands.
But it should protect their ability to do business lawfully and make changes to the law suffer strict and careful scrutiny.
This is a topic I’ve been meaning to get to for nearly two weeks, ever since Shannon Watts, head of the demanding mothers who demand things demandingly, posted on Business Insider that Credit Card companies and other financial institutions should interfere and ‘do their part’ to combat gun violence.
No Shannon, they shouldn’t. In fact they should be actively prohibited from taking action, and I believe an amendment to the PLCAA would be the best method for assuring compliance. Anyone offering a stand-in for currency or a method to move currency around should be prohibited from denying payment or collection services to someone engaged in lawful sales regarding firearms, ammunition, or related items.
Firearms, and arms in general, are a lawfully protected at a level that no other produced and manufactured category of product is, in the Bill of Rights. Only arms are specifically enumerated, everything else that could be a product or service is inferred. In practice, we know that there is no rule prohibiting blocking the sales of or preventing a host from not taking an advertisement or sales page. We’ve seen this everywhere from the Superbowl rejecting a Daniel Defense ad to Facebook banning all accessories remotely related, including armor, optics, and holsters, during the 2021 Biden inauguration.
Funny, items purchased during the inauguration weekend wouldn’t possibly arrive in time for anything, but whatever. It’s more about looking like you’re taking a stand than doing something effective. Gun control at its finest. Now let’s dive into Watt’s reasons for asking Credit Card companies to block lawful commerce in constitutionally protected items. I’m sure it is brilliant.
We’ve made undeniable progress when it comes to keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook School renewed calls for sensible gun laws eight years ago, 13 states have passed laws requiring background checks on all gun sales or strengthening existing background check requirements. 29 states and D.C. have passed bills to strengthen the laws that keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, and following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, 14 states and D.C. have passed extreme risk laws, which let family members and law enforcement ask a court to remove firearm access when there are red flags that someone poses an extreme risk to themselves or others.
I think she managed to get about half the buzzwords into a single opening paragraph while praising a bunch of policies that didn’t do what she is claiming and admitting the laws don’t work all that well. Impressive opening.
29 states and D.C. have passed bills to strengthen the laws that keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers,
Convicted domestic abusers, even at the misdemeanor level, are federally prohibited persons. What laws were needed to make it more illegal than that? Does making it more illegal than federally illegal actually curb the number of instances? Would more stringently enforcing sentencing cut down on the number of domestic incidents more effectively than telling convicted individuals that they cannot have a gun, but they can’t have it even more now.
Passing that off like it was progress…
But despite this life-saving progress — and the prospect of historic action from Washington after this week’s election results in Georgia — the reality is that someone who would be legally prohibited from buying a gun is able to whip out their credit card and order one online as easily as they could order an air fryer from Amazon.
Yep, she said that was progress. What she doesn’t add to this little *OMG Shocked Face Emoji* declaration is that the felon getting caught with the finished 80% is no different than the one who grabbed a new heater from their associate the day he or she got out of their incarceration. This is the equivalency of asking gas stations to stop selling alcohol and gas, or rather asking the Credit Card companies to stop processing transactions from stations that sell alcohol and gas because people might drive drunk, especially people previously convicted of driving drunk.
American companies have for years been shipping firearm kits through the mail that require only the most basic tools and a few hours to put together. Despite the fact that federal law requires serial numbers and background checks for all firearms sold by commercial sellers, these so-called “ghost guns” are sold without either. Because they don’t have serial numbers, they can’t be traced by law enforcement, making them particularly dangerous.
Yes, they can become firearms. Yes, they are designed to become firearms. But legally speaking, they aren’t. And the onus for following the law regarding not turning non-firearms into a firearm is ultimately on prohibited individual, like drinking and driving is. Remember this, we are all, every single one of us, prohibited persons from drunk driving. The law, and law enforcement, cannot make you drink and drive anymore they can stop you for doing so though, they can only penalize you if you get caught in violation.
The penalty for assembly of a P80 by a prohibited person is the same as going to the hardware store and throwing together something from the available parts there. If the end result is able to shoot a live round of ammunition and the possessor is prohibited, they are violating the law. But the law doesn’t stop them. The only thing we are debating is the investment time, not the act.
It shouldn’t be this easy to get an untraceable gun, and it doesn’t have to be. With federal regulators falling well short of their obligations to the public, credit card companies have an opportunity — and a responsibility — to be part of the solution by refusing to process these dangerous and illegal sales.
Not. Illegal. The very definition of not illegal. If they were illegal, as stated here falsely, they would be regulated as a firearm and subject to FFL transfers. But once again. They. Are. Not. Firearms. The sale is not illegal.
The illegal act is not performed by the seller. The illegal act is performed by anyone who completes one, or take possession of a finished one, and is a prohibited person. The illegal act is in finishing one and knowingly giving it to a prohibited individual. The sale isn’t illegal, stop saying that it is. Next she will call it a loophole.
Ghost guns are the fastest-growing gun safety threat in the United States and the government has done far too little to address the deadly risks they pose. Federal regulators have failed to act, and now these building blocks for guns can be purchased online and without a background check by anyone, anytime.
I can also buy raw forgings and machines to finish them into any shape I want, or a 3D printer. I can then source unregulated pieces and finish my spooky scary “Ghost Gun” with no one the wiser. Firearms are simple machines, because of this they are very hard to prohibit. Ask any nation that has tried, look at their actual crime rates.
People are exploiting this loophole every single day. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates 10,000 ghost guns were recovered by law enforcement in 2019 alone. And amid a surge in gun sales during the coronavirus pandemic, the problem has just gotten worse, with so many ghost guns being purchased that many companies reported that their kits were backordered.
Ha! She said it!
Okay, so “10,000 Ghost Guns” were recovered. Assuming all of the reported items were in finished and working condition how many of those had been used to further a crime? How many confiscated from a prohibited person under circumstances unrelated to the possession? How many prosecutions did this result in? And most importantly, did this show a significant uptick in criminal misuse of firearms overall or just the preferred method of acquiring a firearm?
Because if this is just the flavor of the week for getting a gun, stopping it does jack, followed by squat, to improve crime rates.
In a legal brief supporting a lawsuit brought by Everytown and several cities to force federal action, the city of Los Angeles disclosed this week that in 2020 police there have recovered more than 600 ghost guns, at least 231 of which were used in serious or violent crimes. The San José Police Department, for its part, seized 142 ghost guns during criminal investigations between January 2015 and April 2020 — nine during homicide investigations.
So San Jose California, which has an overall much lower than average homicide rate compared to the state as a whole recovered 9 of these vicious and terrible plague bearer pistols in a 5 year span ‘linked’ to homicides. But with a population of about 1,000,000 and around 25-45 homicides a year that means they were “recovered during the investigation” of well under 10% of total homicides. So what did the other 90% use? If this is such a loophole why don’t we see higher incident rates. Why use the language “recovered during investigation” instead of a more firm “method of injury,” is it because that already paltry number of 9 would drop lower? Did San Jose recover a single “Ghost Gun” that was confirmed as the method of injury in a homicide?
They can’t ‘ghost’ the ballistics. This thing is just missing an assigned stamping of numbers and letters, not leaving untraceable evidence. In any of those homicide investigations, did the lack of a serial number prevent a charge of homicide, aggravated assault, prohibited possession of a firearm, or any other similar charge? Did the lack of a serial number hamper that in any meaningful way?
Or are we just pulling this out of our asses to make a problem sound worse, because if the data was considered objectively it would amount to, “well.. people who don’t follow the law still don’t when it comes to these guns too. Surprise.” If we could correlate and causeate (the act of determining causation) that these were a significant threat above and beyond other firearms we would have something to work with, but the data is saying otherwise… it is just another gun. And unless you have an effective method to remove firearms as a threat category then all we’re doing is arguing about branding.
Last year, a ghost gun was used in an ambush shooting of two LA County Sheriff’s deputies, and the shooter who opened fire at Saugus High School used a ghost gun to kill two students and wound three others. Ghost guns and crime go hand in hand; they are ideally suited for criminals seeking to avoid scrutiny and in need of an untraceable firearm. Ghost guns are undermining our country’s laws and our communities’ safety, and we are paying the price of inaction with American lives.
In 2015 a Japanese man burned 36 people to death at a studio, on purpose. Fire and crime go hand in hand. Fire is ideally suited for criminals seeking to avoid scrutiny and in need of an untraceable weapon. Fire is undermining the safety of the Japanese people and the laws against arson.
See? See what I did there?
Just weeks before it will have to answer in court to Everytown’s lawsuit over its failure to act, the ATF last week executed a search warrant at Polymer80, a leading manufacturer of ghost guns whose products make up more than four in five of the ghost guns being recovered in multiple cities. In the process of obtaining the warrant, ATF acknowledged for the first time in federal court that it is illegal for the company to sell complete ghost gun kits without serial numbers or a background check.
So now you are taking credit for scaring the ATF into action? By the way, did we read what the ATF actually took on? It was the complete kit SKU’s where you bought all the parts together, instead of adding them to your cart as separate items. Hardly an iron clad case. And no, it isn’t illegal for Poly80 to do this. This a shot the ATF is taking that is treading on thin ground definition wise, all it will take is a judge asking what the definition of 80% means (and which part it applies to) in order to sink this case. They are alleging that having all the parts of a firearm be purchased at once, bundled with the 80% receiver, actually constitutes the firearm being more than 80% complete, when 80% complete only refers to the receiver itself and not any of the unregulated parts.
The ATF raid was an important step, but the agency has far more to do. Until it asserts full regulatory authority over this dangerous and illegal end-run around our gun safety laws, we need to fight the problem on every front, and that means declining to process payments for illegal and dangerous ghost gun kits.
Again. Not. Illegal.
Dozens of websites that advertise Polymer80’s ghost gun kits and similar all-in-one products accept MasterCard, Visa and American Express. But if these companies were to block illegal ghost gun transactions, many manufacturers would likely find themselves out of business. That’s why we need credit card companies to stand with us and save lives.
And that is why we need to add financial discriminatory protections to the PLCAA
No company that offers to process payments should be allowed to refuse the transaction for a lawful product or service. Most importantly in the case of the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. It should be made unlawful, and a heavy penalty assessed, against any financial payment service which refuses to process lawful debt transactions made to purchase arms and associated goods.
A private company can refuse to sell themselves, refuse to advertise, refuse to allow advertisements for firearms and related gear on their platforms. That is arguably within their rights, if not their best financial interests, to do. But any company offering a service where they allow the transfer of money for a good or service should be prohibited from refusing a lawful transaction.
“This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.” – Federal Reserve Note
If your business is in the business of helping facilitate the transfer of money, you should not be allowed to refuse a transaction for lawful goods or services. Especially Constitutionally Protected Ones.
With Wednesday’s inauguration of President Joe Biden, gun rights activists and firearms enthusiasts alike are rightly concerned about gun control legislation. While those are legitimate concerns, there’s an existing law you may not have heard of, and it’s a law that President Biden favors overturning: The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
In layman’s terms, the Act, often referred to as the PLCAA provides the same liability shield to firearms manufacturers and retailers that Ford or a Ford dealer would get. For example: if a person gets drunk, hops in their Ford Mustang and kills someone, Ford isn’t liable for that because the drunk person was committing a crime and using their product incorrectly/illegally. Up until 2005, gun companies didn’t have that sort of protection. When PLCAA passed in 2005, it provided a legal shield for manufacturers and retailers against lawsuits stemming from criminal or negligent use of their products.
How it works
The PLCAA doesn’t stop people from suing gun companies. Let’s construct a fictional narrative to explain this. Let’s say there’s a mass shooting, and the shooter uses a BlastoMatic 9000. The families of the victims get together and sue BlastoMatic. BlastoMatic’s lawyers file a motion to have the suit dismissed because of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. A judge then decides if PLCAA applies in this instance, and rules accordingly. There have been lawsuits tossed because of PLCAA, notably in 2010 and 2012; however other suits have been allowed to continue. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act is specifically designed to protect manufacturers and dealers from civil liability actions stemming from criminal or unlawful misuse of their products. “Criminal or unlawful misuse” is the key phrase, because as you’ll see, not all uses of firearms or ammunition are covered.
What’s not covered
Specifically not covered in PLCAA is negligence or criminal acts on the part of the firearms industry company. For example, in 2016 a gun store in Missouri settled a lawsuit for $2.2 Million dollars because they had sold a gun to a woman with a mental disorder. The judge ruled that PLCAA didn’t apply because the store should not have made the sale. This is referred to as “negligent entrustment,” and occurs when an industry company sells or transfers guns or ammo to someone that they clearly shouldn’t. Manufacturers and dealers can be held liable if they commit negligent entrustment, or if they commit negligence per se.
Why it matters
You may be thinking “why should I care about this law? I’m not an FFL, I’m not a manufacturer or a retailer.” You’re right, you’re not. However, the whole reason that NRA and NSSF lobbied for this law was because the firearms industry was being targeted by frivolous lawsuits funded by the deep pockets of gun grabbers. The policy goal of these lawsuits was to cause “death by a thousand cuts” according to then HUD Secretary, now Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo. If you can’t get gun laws passed in Congress, just sue them until it’s prohibitive to do business.
Joe Biden and you
President Biden has repeatedly stated he’s in favor of repealing PLCAA, and now he has the means to do that. It will be a tough road, since the law passed with broad bipartisan support in 2005. But the political landscape has changed a lot since then, and then Senator Biden was one of the 19 votes against the bill. Fortunately, PLCAA can only be repealed by an act of Congress, or the Supreme Court overturning it.
Be on guard
We’re writing this article specifically because PLCAA isn’t a well-known law, and a repeal would be disastrous to our community. But because it’s not a well-known or well understood law, an attempted repeal won’t get people writing angry letters to their Representatives and Senators. So if you see this, share it. Educate your friends. Get them ready to write those angry letters.
EAGLEVILLE, PA, January 21, 2021 – Streamlight® Inc., a leading provider of high-performance lighting and weapon light/laser sighting devices, introduced the TLR®RM 1 Laser and TLR® RM 2 Laser tactical lighting systems for long guns. Packaged as a system, each rail mounted light features independently operating push-button and remote pressure switches; the kit provides everything users need to mount to long guns. Also available in light-only models, the TLR RM 1 Laser and the TLR RM 2 Laser deliver 500 and 1,000 lumens, respectively.
“The TLR RM 1 and 2 Laser versions offer a precise red aiming laser for tactical and military users, along with a convenient mode select toggle switch,” said Streamlight President and Chief Executive Officer Ray Sharrah. “They also deliver a powerful beam with extensive range and solid, good peripheral coverage.”
The rail mount systems include an ergonomically friendly, multi-function tail switch, along with a remote switch input option. The remote switch is designed to exit the weapon at a 90º angle, improving wire routing to preserve rail space. The lights feature three modes: Laser only, LED illumination only or both, operated by the new side toggle switch. The facecap offers a ‘Safe off’ feature to prevent unintentional activation.
The new models are designed to quickly and securely attach to any long gun with a MIL Standard 1913 or NATO Rail, without the need for hands in front of the muzzle. The lights offer highly accurate sight repeatability when remounting. Each light includes a key kit to securely fit the light onto a broad array of weapons.
The lights each feature the latest in power LED technology, and include a custom TIR optic that produces a concentrated beam with optimum peripheral illumination. The TLR RM 1 Laser offers 500 lumens, 5,000 candela and a beam distance of 140 meters; the TLR RM 2 Laser provides 1,000 lumens and 10,000 candela with a 200-meter beam distance. The lights also include a selectable strobe feature.
The TLR RM 1 Laser includes one (1) 3 volt CR123A lithium battery, measures 3.2 inches in length and weighs 2.97 ounces. The TLR RM 2 Laser includes two (2) 3-volt CR123A lithium batteries, is 4.6 inches long and weighs 4.95 ounces. Both feature 1.5 hours of continuous run time and three hours on strobe.
IPX4-rated for water-resistant operation, the TLR RM 1 and TLR RM 2 Lasers are constructed with durable anodized machined aircraft aluminum with an impact-resistant Borofloat® glass lens.
Available in black, the TLR RM 1 and TLR RM 2 Laser Lighting Systems have MSRPs of $398.00 and $415.00, respectively. The TLR RM 1 and TLR RM 2 Laser Light-Only models have MSRPs of $360.00 and $378.00 respectively. Each comes with Streamlight’s Limited Lifetime Warranty.
About Streamlight Based in Eagleville, PA, Streamlight, Inc. has more than 45 years of experience making tough, durable, long-lasting flashlights designed to serve the specialized needs of professionals and consumers alike. Since 1973, the company has designed, manufactured and marketed high-performance flashlights, and today offers a broad array of lights, lanterns, weapon light/laser sighting devices, and scene lighting solutions for professional law enforcement, military, firefighting, industrial, automotive, and outdoor applications. Streamlight is an ISO 9001:2015 certified company. For additional information, please call 800-523-7488, visit streamlight.com or connect with us on facebook.com/streamlight; twitter.com/Streamlight; instagram.com/streamlightinc; linkedin.com/company/streamlight-inc./; and youtube.com/streamlighttv.
You read the title, and you might think, “Travis, you love shotguns, how can you say that?” I am indeed a shotgun nerd. I enjoy shooting shotguns more so than any other firearm, and I even choose to use one for home defense. The thing is, if you can’t look at your favorite weapon and see its flaws, you likely don’t have a proper grasp on it.
Shotguns have lots of flaws, especially for the home defender. If you want a home defense shotgun you must understand why, it’s downsides, and address the deficiencies.
Home Defense Shotgun Loads Overpenetrate
In a home defense scenario, the two loads you’d use to shoot bad guys are buckshot and slugs. Both will rip through the interior and exterior walls with great force. They are man stopping rounds (yes, that term is apt here), and a miss is sending potentially nine pellets freely through your home and potentially at your neighbors. 5.56 is the best choice for limiting over penetration damage.
The Fix: If you are using a shotgun for home defense, learn all about angles. Taking a knee and shooting at an upward angle or aiming from the top of some stairs or at the pelvic area for a downward angle sends buckshot into the dirt or the sky. Mastering angles limits the harm an errant round of buckshot creates.
The Recoil Can Be Mighty
Shotguns are not egalitarian weapons, and any thoughts of equality are thrown out with the shotgun. A 12 gauge shotgun hits hard from both directions. Smaller framed shooters, heck regular-sized shooters, can have trouble with the gun. The heavier recoil isn’t just the inconvenience of shoulder pounding pain, but it makes follow up shots slower and can easily take you off target.
The Fix – Training will be the best way to counter heavy shotgun recoil: training and properly selected ammunition. Take a class from Fisher, learn to run the gun and proper recoil mitigation techniques. Reduced recoil tactical loads deliver plenty of stopping performance and help cut down some of those home defense shotgun blues.
Low Ammo and Slow Reloads
Your modern tactical shotgun holds anywhere from 4 to 7 rounds of 12 gauge 2.75-inch ammunition. Compared to a 30-40 round P-MAG or the D-60, this seems low.
Admittedly the low ammo and slow reloads would only be a problem in the most extreme circumstances. However, it’s still an issue that needs addressing. You can reload a modernized rifle platform or a handgun anywhere from 3 to 10 times the capacity in moments. The same can’t be said for the shotgun.
The Fix – Learn the make your shots count and learn to reload with some gumption. Side saddles help, and lots of Snap Cap practice can shorten the gap. Proactive reloading is also a must-have, and it’s ability to reload your home defense shotgun before the gun ever runs empty.
Home Defense Shotguns Tend To Be Long(er)
Without dipping into the world of NFA shotguns, it’s easy to see that shotguns are rather long. Longer than your standard carbine by a good bit. Part of this is their barrel requirements, and the other part is the often longer stocks and longer receivers to accommodate shells as long as 3 inches. Add on the fact that shotguns with 8 to 9 round capacities often have a 20-inch barrel for the extra capacity, and that length is compounded further. Factory configured shotguns are longer, bulkier, and often less maneuverable indoors.
The Fix – Outside of a 14-inch barrel and a tax stamp, the best thing you can do is get something with an adjustable stock. Magpul’s SGA stock makes pump guns shorter and easier to handle. Learning how to “short stock” is another technique but is one best-taken advantage of when learned properly.
If You’re Deadset on a Home Defense Shotgun
If you want to run with a home defense shotgun, then the best I can do is suggest that you get a high-quality semi-auto shotgun. Semi-autos have become quite reliable these days. They have lower recoil, faster follow up shots, and are often more modern than one of the old pump guns floating around.
There are lots of downsides to the home defense shotgun, but at the end of the day, it’s still a devastatingly powerful weapon. It delivers more lead per trigger pull than any other shoulder-fired weapon. Addressing your weapon’s downsides is the only way to become proficient with it, so never get stuck on the idea your gun is a magic totem without weakness.
