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JTarrou  1yr ago (text post)   3199 thread views

I'm a "gun guy", AMA

A couple people had expressed interest in this topic, and I have a bit of extra time for a couple days, so here goes:

Bona fides: I am a former infantry NCO and sniper, hunter, competitive shooter, reloader, hobby gunsmith, sometimes firearms trainer and currently work in a gun shop, mostly on the paperwork/compliance side. Back in the day, was a qualified expert with every standard small arm in the US inventory circa 2003 (M2, 4, 9, 16, 19, 249, 240B, 21, 24, 82 etc.), and today hang around the 75th percentile of USPSA classifications. I've shot Cap-and-Ball, Trap and Sporting Clays badly; Bullseye and PRS somewhat better and IDPA/USPSA/UML/Two-gun with some local success. Been active in the 2A community since the mid-90s, got my first instructor cert in high school, and have held a CPL for almost twenty years now.

I certainly don't claim to be an expert in every aspect of firearms, there's huge areas that escape my knowledge base, but if you've got questions I'll do my best to answer.

Technical questions

Gun control proposals for feasibility

Industry

Training

Wacky opinions

General geekery

Some competition links (not my own) just for the interested.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=U5IhsWamaLY&t=173

https://youtube.com/watch?v=93nEEINflXE

https://youtube.com/watch?v=utcky0zq10E

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xVh4CjbgK7s

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0IK2RUxVq3A

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I’m agonizing over AR optics. My baseline AR is a Ruger 556 with a 16” barrel and FSB. I’ve been running a red dot on it, but red dot + FSB just irks me. I am in the no BUIS camp with modern optics. Also a Forward Assist hater, but I digress. So now I’m running a detachable carry handle, with a red dot mount for a Holosun 403 footprint (Aimpoint?). Don’t have that red dot yet, so just irons for now. Slapped the old Bushnell TRS-25 on 300BLK range toy.

All of that is fine, no agony. The Ruger is my factory rifle with irons and a chin weld red dot. Great inside 100 yards and good to 300+ depending on target.

But now I’ve built an SPR/DMR, with a White Oak 18” SPR profile, fluted, on a KP-15 polymer lower. Intended use is beyond 100 yards, out to 600+, not that I have tons of local options to do much shooting at those ranges. A 1-6/8/10 LPVO makes sense, but as I’ve learned more about scopes, I realize the 1x case severely limits ease of use at higher magnifications.

Long story short, I’m considering the following options:

  • Fixed 4x scope (baseline optic, already mounted)

  • SWFA SS 3-15x

  • Primary Arms 5x prism

Keep in mind, I still haven’t fired this thing, and it’s intended to be a practical rifle, so man-sized targets at range, no x rings.

I love red dots for unlimited eye relief and minimal parallax. I’m skeptical of prisms, never having spent much time with them. I don’t have a ton of experience with magnified optics. I have a cheap 4-16x Vortex that I used when taking the Ruger beyond 300 yards.

If I had a LPVO or red dot + magnifier, maybe I repurpose the rifle into a heavy ass tack driver 0-500 yards. But I think it makes more sense to dedicate it to beyond 100 yards.

Wat do.

I have a cheap 4-16x Vortex that I used when taking the Ruger beyond 300 yards.

Why not just put said cheap Vortex on the longer-range AR and shoot with it until you've found something another scope will do better than it?

(Alternately, what have you found wrong with it such that you want to switch in the first place?)

If you're dedicating the rifle to beyond 100 I really wouldn't worry about 1x- the reason hunting-oriented scopes don't tend to bother with 1x to begin with is a combination of the fact that doing 1x right costs money (it's not like they have to make a 4x scope exactly 4x- you won't notice if it's 3.9 or 4.1- but if they're making a 1x scope you will notice 1.1 or 0.9x), and it costs you in top-end magnification. And any and all of those are still going to leave you at a disadvantage if you now need to take an unanticipated shot at 10 yards anyway.

Good point; I want to play with the 4x fixed scope first, as I haven’t squeezed the trigger under that one, yet. Was going to use it to “eval” a 3x vs 5x prism setup. Now that I understand how an Elcan works, I like that it has the 1x option. Anyway, I’m rambling. Point is, the Vortex is a cheap scope, 2FP, Crossfire line, now that I recall. I’ll save for the SWFA SS 3-15x in that class.

The other concern I have is maybe mounting a piggyback pistol RDS. Just for that sub 100 yard coverage if need be. Gonna leave that for later though.

You seem to be at risk of actually may needing to use it. (murder capital of the US, and all that).

Hi-Power is a solid gun, it was far ahead of its time when it came out.

With the right ammo - probably something JHP, it's an okay defensive gun, and might even be valuable, depending on the model. Make sure to test the ammo/gun combination though.

Not many things you could do, apart from getting a holster and laser cartridge /target to practice drawing and firing. I'd certainly do so were I living in such a place, though I'd probably keep the Hi-Power as a collectible and buy a more modern gun.

Getting up to speed on the legal issues. Gun forums go over that exhaustively, I believe.

But seeing as you live in murder capital, I'd worry somewhat, often these places are liable to have DA's that, as they say care about everything but crime.

Sorry I can't offer more advice. Things to watch out for are, some modern ammo may be too powerful (high pressure) for an old gun. But again, maybe high pressure rounds are okay in a Hi-Power.

Your best bet is either researching it one some of the bigger gun forums - whether higher powered rounds (9x19 +P or +P+) are okay, or just buying ordinary JHP ammo and checking whether it feeds reliably. Getting a failure to feed or bad ejection in a tight spot .. you don't want that.

Fire at least say, 50 rounds. There should be zero problems.

This might be a bit pricey, as JHP ammo typically costs more than basic FMJ or other simple ammo. With FMJ (those are the basic, fully metal encased rounds with the basic oval shape), there's some risk of overpenetration with 9mm, and the wound effect is lower.

People have been known to stay upright after getting hit multiple times, that's a risk with most pistols. Shotguns, however, are not handy and have punishing recoil.

For extra utility in case of home use, you may want to get a shoulder stock for your hi-power, and a say, some e.g. big 30 round magazines..

People have missed shots at amazingly close range in stressful situation with handguns, with a stock, it's much less likely.

So long as you have safe storage and a good grasp of the safety fundamentals, you're covering your bases for responsible keeping.

That will have no bearing on your ability to use the firearm should the need arise. That takes training and regular practice to have any real confidence in your ability to operate under stress. If you are serious about defensive gun use, I would say dry-fire weekly and live-fire quarterly to stay in practice, assuming a good base of training beforehand. Shooting skills are quite perishable.

It also takes a certain mindset, which not everyone has. Understand that guns are life and death. If you have a gun for protection, that directly implies a willingness to kill people with it (under the correct legal and moral, low probability circumstances). I weed out about two thirds of the people who want to train just by socratic dialogue on this topic. If you think you're going to scare people with a gun, guns are not for you. If you "would never use it, just want to have it", guns are not for you. The minute you hear someone talking about racking rounds and chasing people off, guns are not for them. Guns are to defend your life and the lives of your loved ones and community. Using them effectively means potentially ending the life of someone who is threatening those lives in a real and pressing manner. If all that sounds terrible and barbaric, defensive guns are not for you.

One of the worst things you can do as a gun owner is to bring the firearm to a violent situation that you are not willing to use it in. It's a free gun for your opponent and escalates the stakes of any violent encounter.

If I train consistently, is it likely I'll be able to execute that training if the need arises?

It is likely you'll be able, yes.

The rabbit hole can go pretty deep if you dig into the training, but I would say basic competence with a firearm, plus a part of your normal emergency drill that you run through for "possible intruder in the house" would cover most scenarios.

a dummy gun and some volunteers is the usual form, from what I hear. This article might be relevant to your interests.

If you use a good quality gunsafe/trigger lock, conceal it well, and don't wave it around, it presents basically no added risk on net. The basic rules of range safety/trigger discipline make it basically impossible to shoot someone by accident if followed properly and consistently.

The biggest risk to having a gun in the home isn't accidents, it is a (more likely to be successful) suicide. You can judge that risk, I can't. I have never been suicidal in any serious way, and so I don't want to speak on what it looks/feels like; but when I went through a particular rough patch I did not have firearms in my home for a six month period out of an abundance of caution; and when friends have gone through things like eg divorce/infidelity I got a bunch of guys together from out mutual church and we went over and had a few beers and said "Hey, we're worried about you, let's take the guns out of your home for a bit."

I've considered the mental health risk too. There are at least two people who could responsibly hold onto the gun for me, should I ever need it out of the house for a while.

That's the most important thing, and unfortunately one that so many people are uncomfortable thinking about. I've been a lifelong gun owner and gun user and 2a advocate; but the numbers don't lie. The majority of gun deaths are suicides, and if you take out gang violence and other shit that likely does not apply to your family it becomes the vast majority of possible deaths that you are at risk for. Accidents are by comparison practically non-existent, and responsible conservative gun use practically zeros that out.

My first senior patrol leader from the Boy Scouts shot himself while he was in college, as did my first cub-scout pack leader when he was going through a messy divorce. {My Scoutmaster actually got shot too, but it was his wife's new boyfriend. Boy Scouts featured a lot of gun violence come to think of it.} While I oppose Red Flag laws as the worst of modern gun restrictions, I think we as a community need to think about helping people be responsible during personal crises. If someone is in a high risk situation (fired, cancer diagnosis, infidelity) when you think about it the odds of a DGU have remained constant while the odds of suicide are acute at that time; family/friends would do well to try to remove guns from the home for a period and return them later.

Legal news perhaps of interest to the readers of this thread.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oxa-0youn4A

Fifth Circuit court strikes down Trump's bump-stock ban, direct correlations for the pistol brace rule as well.

Hi. I'm from Europe, and have never held a real weapon in my hands. I'm visiting Oakland, California in February, and I'm looking for recommendations about how to go about changing that.

  • I think renting and shooting an AR15 would be a good combination of easy, fun and interesting. Are there better alternatives?

  • Would you recommend finding an indoor or an outdoor range?

  • How much instruction should I expect / ask for?

  • How much ammo would I use on a couple of hours?

  • Could/Should I ask for iron sights, red dot or scope?

  • Can I assume the range has sufficient ear protection available? + Eye protection, targets etc.

  • What would you recommend I read/watch before?

Thanks!

First, where you're going is not only one of the most gun-unfriendly areas in the country, but also one of the furthest from any gun friendly areas. Your best option is Las Vegas, but that's around nine hours by car away. If you find yourself there though, that's the place to splash out. Unless you know someone into guns in Oakland, it might be hard to find something local. Out in the countryside there might be some options. Can't help you there, I live a couple thousand miles away.

1: Plenty of alternatives, but you know what you want. Usually I start people out on .22s, but if you want the full monty experience and are limited in time and money, go for what you want.

2: Outdoor if you can, but this may not be available.

3: As much as you're willing to pay for

4: Your first time shooting a gun? I wouldn't expect very much, fifty to a hundred rounds, maybe less. Depends a lot on your personality, the range you're at, and your financial resources. Ammo is expensive.

5: Red dot or scope will be easiest to learn on

6: Yes. If they don't have these three things, you shouldn't be there for your first time.

7: Something on the platform you want to shoot. Elsewhere in this thread someone asked similar things about the AR-15 platform, and I linked an operational overview video. To supplement that, and because that one is firearm specific, here's a safety video that's at least mildly less boring than most. https://youtube.com/watch?v=W2Vrc2R1oGU

Reno is about a 4 hour drive and has pretty good ranges, both indoor and outdoor. My grandfather was an avid collector but lived in San Jose, so 2-4 Reno trips per year were a big chunk of his vacations.

  • There are different, not better alternatives. A good indoor range will let you pay one fee for multiple rifles. Plan a rental chain based on caliber, purchase that, and try out 2-3 different things. Also try something with a suppressor if they have it. Consider doing both a rifle and a pistol.

  • You're in one of the least gun-friendly cities/states in the country. You'll take what you can get. A great outdoor range with friends > an indoor range with friends > indoor range alone > outdoor range alone.

  • Most gun shop employees will show you the manual of arms, all will give you good gun safety tips and rules to follow. In terms of good shooting technique that's generally beyond their pay grade, but you should watch a couple of youtube videos about great grip/handling for what you plan to rent if you want to have a good time.

  • You can always go back and purchase more ammo. Get around 60 rounds for a rifle and 50 for a handgun. Since this is your first time at the range I expect you'll be exhausted from nerves by that point, but if you're not just walk back to the desk and buy more.

  • Yes, they'll have all the sensory protection you need.

My major suggestion would be to try and find a "gun guy" in the locale to go with you.

Your first time shooting, put a single round in the magazine. Load the weapon. Aim it with your finger off the trigger. Press the trigger up till it resists, take your first shot. Set down the weapon and breathe.

Do the same thing with 3 rounds next, then 10. Then whatever you want.

Thank you

Do you share my suspicion that Gun Jesus sold out to H&K ?

He's supposed to dig deep, but his coverage of the G36 controversy was absurd. Basically, after examining and firing newly made guns whose recievers were made out of entirely different polymer type than the guns that had problems, he concluded the whole thing was just internet bullshit based on acceptable deviation and some ammo problems.

Meanwhile, German scientific testing reports were fairly conclusive and ruled out it being ammo issues.

Sometimes it's possible to be wrong about things; you could argue that point harder about the Hudson 9 than you could with HK coverage in general.

That said, if this really was a problem inherent to plastic receivers, we'd expect to see it not just in the G36, but also in every other gun that has its barrel trunnion cast in polymer, be it German (G36, UMP, MP7), American (Tom Bostic's copies), Czech (Scorpion Evo 3), Israeli/Ukrainian (Tavor/Fort-221), Italian (ARX-160), Croatian (VHS-1, VHS-2), or Mexican (FX-05), to say nothing of 3D printed projects that inherently work like that. And no, a competitor's promotional materials doesn't really count as evidence that it happens.

I think the reason people believe the allegations are accurate/have stuck around this long are primarily because the MG36 never saw production (which is what you'd expect if there were heat issues under continuous sustained fire- as in, what a light machine gun is supposed to be able to do- the Internet says this is the reason they cancelled it and, if I recall correctly, predates the 'melting guns' scandal).

And when you look at some of the other guns designed around that time- the G36 was the first gun to be made that way, after all- you'll see the other ones that only really use plastic as surrounding furniture rather than the material the part that contains the barrel is made out of (in particular the Steyr AUG, and FN's F2000 and P90, are fundamentally metal guns even though they don't really look like it when they're put together), so one could reasonably believe a reason they did that rather than just making the receiver out of plastic was because the use of plastic was questionable.

Of course, the other side of it is "people plain don't trust plastic in mechanical devices". To this day, the gun industry always says "polymer", not "plastic"- because everyone knows that the plastic used in guns will, like the dollar-store spoon, melt when you expose it to heat and snap in half if you treat them roughly, and good old-fashioned wood spoons won't. So clearly, all plastic guns are untrustworthy when it matters, and the one study that calls out one gun for potentially doing this is naturally going to get signal boosted to the fucking moon.

That said, if this really was a problem inherent to plastic receivers, we'd expect to see it not just in the G36, but also in every other gun that has its barrel trunnion cast in polymer,

https://www.themotte.org/post/296/im-a-gun-guy-ama/51607?context=8#context

How about this video from InRange? Karl has even less incentive against being honest, and I remember he judged it to be lore.

ETA: For my own money, I'm aware the US Army were reportedly not happy with the melting on the XM8, which is basically a G36 with new furniture, but you would think that if melting problems were found on the original G36, the Bundeswehr would surely have found that out within months of getting the first guns before wide-scale adoption. Unless the Bundeswehr does not really test the stuff they buy.

Unless the Bundeswehr does not really test the stuff they buy.

Bundeswehr was the one who wrote the contract in such an absurd way in the first place. One may wonder about corruption in weapons procurement.

I'd be really interested to find out what the original series as delivered us as reciever material, because polyamide with fiberglass - what the newer guns Ian tested use, is a very high end material.

Actually, someone at another forum says he's translated the actual testing report:

https://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=562681

quoting his post:

D: At some point without the knowledge of the Military, H&K changed the formulation of the polymer used to include a cheaper and more common Thermoplastic. (I want to say PET, but my memory could be faulty on this point) Basically the polymer was no longer a Thermoset plastic (or at least not completely) and was now able to melt slightly and soften at increased temperatures. During firing, the heat would rise above that point. This meant the plastic was soft enough to allow the barrel trunnion to shift position in the polymer frame. I seen a cross section picture of a G36, and you could readily see the evidence of melting and trunnion movement.

@FcFromSSC ^^

That's apparently the culprit, so I remembered correctly. It's not really a design issue, but the design requires very particular manufacturing, so perfectly plausible the rifles manufactured at other times aren't as affected which is why the problem wasn't discovered by foreign buyers.

Wow, from Karl's video you'd think the G36 had slept with his wife. Or something else that made him love it.

I don't know much more than the bare bones of the controversy, so I certainly don't know enough to judge.

Normally, I'll side with reports from soldiers in the field over the politically connected defense contractor any time.

But it's also a thing where trained soldiers go to shit in the field and blame the hardware for their own induced problems.

Or real but relatively minor technical glitches get ironed out, but not before the tales of the glitch permanently attach themselves to a weapon system. The M16 had this, where its opponents in the Army forced changes to the design that fucked it up, the guns ran shitty in combat during limited field testing, so they changed things back and mostly the weapon performed at or above standard. But during that "limited field testing" a whole lot of joes got in firefights with unreliable guns, and the legend never died.

And no, I don't think Ian is taking money from HK to lie about his testing. He might be wrong. He might be biased toward HK for some unknown and unprovable reason. But I don't think he's on the payroll.

This wasn't really a minor glitch, it was range training staff complaining the rifles lose zero if left out in the sun, and also some report of unacceptable dispersion from Afghanistan engagement.

Which people dismissed because soldiers always fire too quickly and melt their guns.

However, the range guys weren't doing it, Fraunhofer institute testing found it was .. bad, but H&K won in court because the contract, as agreed on, stipulated gun had to stay accurate only with an extremely low rate of fire, e.g. bolt-action.

If you carefully read their statement here, they never say the guns are accurate if left out in the sun, just that they fulfilled the contract.

I believe the guns are probably sound, if they use a suitable polymer for the reciever. The guns Ian tested had some really fancy stuff polymer filled with fiberglass or something like that.

He didn't test any of the original guns, or any original type recievers, so his opinion, based on the test, was IMO mostly irrelevant, but he didn't say so.

Probably not 'sold out' , more likely didn't want to get into shit with H&K reps or something. That's when I lost a lot of faith I had in him. Guy seemed so knowledgeable.

You're very invested in a pretty minor dispute between parts of the german government. Are you upset because you dislike HK, or because you want to like them?

I was upset because I liked watching McCollum's videos and then when he got into a subject I've encountered before at some US gun blog, he seemed really to be in the wrong and unwilling to even consider he's wrong (my impression, I may be wrong).

You think you can trust someone on guns and then find they're only too human.

I'm gonna argue the other side of this. Here's the video in question.

This wasn't really a minor glitch, it was range training staff complaining the rifles lose zero if left out in the sun, and also some report of unacceptable dispersion from Afghanistan engagement. Which people dismissed because soldiers always fire too quickly and melt their guns.

Neither point-of-impact shift nor group expansion as a gun heats up under rapid fire are equivalent to catastrophic loss of zero. All guns suffer both to a greater or lesser extent, depending on details of construction like barrel mass. The G36 uses a low-mass barrel, so it's going to tend to have more of both, but I've seen no evidence that either amounts to a catastrophic loss of accuracy.

Germany adopted the G36 in 1997. German officials claim to have discovered that the rifle suffers catastrophic loss of accuracy after two magazines of rapid fire in 2012, 15 years later, and a full decade after Germany began deploying troops to Afghanistan for combat operations.

In addition to the Bundeswehr, the G36 has been adopted as the standard-issue service rifle for Spain, Thailand, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, the Philippines, and Portugal, as well as elite military and police units in 46 different countries, among them the US and Mexico. To my knowledge, none of the numerous end-users in any of these other countries have detected this catastrophic flaw in the G36's design in the fifteen or so years that it's been in service. I am pretty confident that American SWAT teams have tried to rapid-fire their G36s at some point. I am very sure that the Mexican National Police have tried to rapid fire their rifles, since they've spent most of those 15 years fighting an exceedingly hot guerrilla war with the Cartels.

So we have a claim of a obvious, catastrophic design flaw in a mass-produced and widely-adopted automatic rifle, which only one organization is able to detect, which coincidentally allows them to halt payments on a major defense contract during an economic crisis. They announce trials for a new rifle with updated requirements, which none of the submissions to that trial can actually pass, which is a fair indication that they aren't actually practical requirements. The German army wasn't actually able to find a better rifle by the standards the g36 was adopted under.

No part of this story is credible. If the g36 melted under rapid fire, it would have been noted in the trials, and it would have been impossible to miss when the Bundeswehr deployed to Afghanistan in the early 2000s. It would have been noted in the evaluations of multiple other military and police units, no few of which went on to adopt it as standard issue. There would be no possible way to cover it up.

If you carefully read their statement here, they never say the guns are accurate if left out in the sun, just that they fulfilled the contract.

There's no evidence I've seen that the rifles are inaccurate if left out in the sun, and fulfilled the contract means they meet the specifications the German army set. I'm pretty sure those specifications don't mandate a limit on fire comparable to a bolt-action.

I believe the guns are probably sound, if they use a suitable polymer for the reciever. The guns Ian tested had some really fancy stuff polymer filled with fiberglass or something like that.

What's your evidence that the rifles Ian (Karl, actually) tested had "some really fancy polymer"? My understanding is that pretty much all polymer firearms parts are filled with fiberglass. Far from being "fancy", strength-enhancing fillers are a bog-standard additive used in pretty much all resin and polymer manufacture, because the fillers both add significant strength to the part and generally cost less than the volume of plastic they displace. For what it's worth, having dabbled in the industry in a former life, I would expect a bespoke small-batch polymer part to be far more likely to have problems than a mass-produced part; factories generally are going to have had a whole lot more resources and investment in ironing out the bugs in the production process.

He didn't test any of the original guns, or any original type recievers, so his opinion, based on the test, was IMO mostly irrelevant, but he didn't say so.

Presumably that would be because there are no original guns available to test, since the g36 isn't available to civilians in the US. Can you point to any actual tests by anyone outside the German government that corroborate the German government's claims? Any civilian or police tests? Any data at all?

They got a rebuild from a bespoke manufacturer using as many German parts as possible, and saw no issues. None of the ~80 police and military units issuing the g36 detected the problems in either evaluation or service, and neither did the Germans themselves for a decade and a half, ten years of that being actual combat operations.

What makes you confident that this problem actually exists at all, much less that Ian and Karl are attempting to cover it up?

I haven't been following the pistol brace rule process thing at all. Do you think they're going to be an option in future?

I would really like to have a shoulderable handgun for sub-50 yard work (mostly racoons and dogs in practice) that could be carried easily and concealed legally. Taking a rifle out on the road is less viable since my county became prog-central.

I couldn't say. The rule change seems self-evidently wrong to me, but legal tradition assures me that simple words mean nothing.

They are an option, but only with a tax stamp, as it currently stands.

Interested in a belt holster for concealed carry of a Beretta M-9 clone under a jacket. Any recommendations? I use an inside-waistband holster at the moment.

I shy away from recommending specific holsters, it's just sort of a personalized thing. Elsewhere in this thread I gave some generalized holster advice, along with a few companies I use personally.

Unless the jacket is very large, you are very large, or the social conventions where you carry are more polite than required, I would say Appendix IWB is the only place most of us can conceal a full-sized gun, and even then you have to dress for it.

I live in a red tribe Texas suburb, so being technically 'concealed' is all that the social conventions require, regardless of how obvious it is.

Fair enough! In that case, I suggest you take the opportunity to put some swag on your carry option and flex on the poors.

https://www.blackhillsleather.com/shop/gun-leather-holster/exotic-skin-leather/bh59-hta/

Dunno. What worked for me was having an IWB holster made on order out of some leather. Worked well, though getting tiny spots of corrosion on the gun was risk, I learned to keep it somewhat oiled.

Then I lost it, somehow. It was only $40 or so, no big deal though.

I'm very late to the party :/ i have some random questions:

  1. When is a gun worn enough not to be usable?

  2. Is it generally worth taking apart such a worn down gun and replacing the broken part or is this not practical (I'm assuming a broken receiver is a write off)?

  3. Bullpup rifles yay or nay?

  4. Ever watch the Forgotten Weapons YouTube channel, thoughts?

  5. A very long shot but any idea if in any western european country it's practical to go to a gun range as a tourist, particularly as one with no prior experience?

  6. Do you cold blue your guns if they get scratched or is it not worth the effort? Ever done hot bluing?

A very long shot but any idea if in any western european country it's practical to go to a gun range as a tourist, particularly as one with no prior experience?

The UK has a massive shotgun culture which you probably wouldn't expect given foreign media coverage, and any range will offer clay pigeon shooting taster sessions. For rifles, Bisley (near Woking, about an hour's drive SW of London) has multiple ranges and a good reputation. Recreational handgun shooting is banned in the UK.

1: Depends on how you are with maintenance. Some wear parts need to be replaced with some regularity, but as long as the frame, receiver and barrel are all still in working order, the gun can be made functional. Once those major parts wear out of spec either to reduce reliability or accuracy below acceptable standards, the gun is done. Obviously the type of gun and what those standards are will vary widely.

2: Most common wear parts are pretty cheap, it's worth it financially if you can install things yourself. If you have to pay a gunsmith, maybe not. On my competition guns, things like ejectors, extractors, strikers, hammers, sears etc. get replaced every twenty to fifty thousand rounds. Certain springs every 10k.

3: Nay so far, the idea has potential.

4: I have, more the technical stuff than the historical, IDGAF about old military guns. I like it, and found Ian very well informed and properly cautious about conclusions.

5: No idea, but France or Switzerland would be my guess if there is one.

6: I once cold-blued a muzzleloader barrel, never hot blued. I don't really care about scratches unless I'm selling a gun, and then I just take a sharpie to it. :P

1 and 2. Guns wear just like any other mechanical device, but mostly by rounds fired through them rather than anything else. Pretty much all manufacturers publish somewhere what parts are recommended to be replaced at what round counts. Every gun, if fired enough, will have some part fail eventually, usually leading to jamming or inability to fire. Very few people will actually fire enough rounds through any gun to wear parts out though. And like any other device, it depends on whether you've actually broken or worn enough parts where the cost of replacement is more than a new item.

There are a few special case situations due to weird laws. Registered transferrable machine gun receivers in the US are extremely expensive and mostly can't be replaced, so people will go to crazy lengths to repair the serialized parts.

For 3, This video by Inrange, related to Forgotton Weapons does a good rundown of the tradeoffs of bullpups. Short version is you're basically always going to be giving something up (ability to casually switch which shoulder you're shooting off of or ability to easily clear malfunctions and verify empty or loaded) in exchange for the shortened length. The worlds' militaries sometimes like them for being easier for soldiers to carry around in cramped armored vehicles and aircraft. As a civilian, they're perfectly adequate for any reasonable use, but you're not going to be in the situations they really benefit from.

For 5, I have no idea about how things are in Europe, but in the US, it's fairly common for bigger ranges to have rentals and to be willing to show newbies how to do some basic shooting. Maybe they have the same there in countries where the laws permit it.

For 6, I've never heard of anyone doing that. Probably there's some super dedicated people somewhere who do that, but I've never met them. Pretty much all quality firearms already have finishes good enough that no such special treatment is necessary.

For 5, I believe most Western European countries encourage potential gun license applicants to visit a range and use range-owned guns before getting a license and buying their own, and most require it.

Feel free to disregard if it falls outside the scope, but do you have any thoughts on firearms tech developments as a political tool for pro-2A partisans? Stuff like 80% lowers, firearms printing, bump stocks, pistol braces, etc? It seems to me that all of these share a common character of eroding the state's capacity to regulate the keeping and bearing of arms. Presuming this is so, do you think think such erosion is a sound strategy for the gun culture to pursue?

Great thread, btw.

I think it's a result of two things:

First is that any rule about technology is open to technological exploitation

The second is that the people who make gun control laws mostly don't know a goddamned thing about guns, so they make shit laws (on their own merits) that are easily speed-run by yokels in their basements.

In general I like it, but it does have its failure modes.

What are the failure modes, if you don't mind me asking?

Most obviously, anyone (including non-stupid criminals) can manufacture cheap, working firearms on their own. It erodes the ability of the government to control the flow of firearms, but whether that is good or bad depends a lot on who those guns go to.

In your opinion, what should be the legal limit to the 2A? Did Heller go too far, or did it not go too far enough?

Not nearly far enough, IMO, but perhaps on different axes to our current political situation.

My dreamworld 2A is explicitly military, and would have tiered sections for access to higher level/more dangerous firearms, of which concealed carry handguns would be the top. The current and last couple generations of standard infantry arm should be the base level. So ARs>hunting guns>beltfed>handguns. Combine with national service/training for the lower rungs (well regulated), add in some graduated time requirements (perhaps with graduated age requirements). As an example if you have had access to firearms for ten years, have completed all the safety training for all the tiers and are thirty years of age, you could get a CCW permit. I view personal carry as a side benefit of the 2A, not the main point, and handguns are by far the most dangerous in terms of crime.

So ARs>hunting guns>beltfed>handguns.

Why ARs ahead of hunting guns?

Adherence to the original intent of the amendment. The intent is for the "security of a free state", not pheasants. It would be constitutional to ban hunting outright, plus all guns of a "purely sporting use". Only long tradition and statute protect those guns, but the 2A protects AR-15s (and 1903s, M14s and Garands etc.) almost above all else.

Are explosives an "arm"? I've toyed with arguing that they aren't, but applying that sort of logic to our present tech-base leads to some rather strained conclusions. I think a lot of the problems average out to normalcy under current conditions, but in the abstract, it seems like there really are developments in arms that aren't survivable for what I recognize as a functional society. Technology places an increasing amount of power in the hands of the individual, and at some point I'm not sure how society can survive an individual's veto.

That's a difficult one. I believe both that the amendment as written, under original intent does include artillery and explosives, and that that might be part of it that should be amended. It's a tough question, because the danger factor just rises exponentially, and there's less argument for auxiliary uses.

My own thoughts are similar.

When I was much younger, I had an epiphany: technology grants power to the individual, and the better the technology, the more power granted. Assuming an open-ended increase in tech, and given that destroying is generally easier than creating or defending, there comes a point where individuals are too powerful for complex society to survive. I think explosives, particularly powerful modern explosives, make modern society more or less impossible if they aren't pretty tightly restricted.

The best solution to the problem I've been able to find is to try to redefine what an "arm" is, working from the idea that "arms" are descriminate, able to focus their effects on specific targets. Rocks, knives, bows, muskets, ar-15s, railguns, lasers, even Artillery are all capable of accurate, discriminate effect. Fire, explosives and fragmentation, poison, biologicals, and exotic physics effects are not. I think most within the gun culture would agree that the value we see in the Second Amendment comes from discriminate weapons, not indiscriminate ones. I think trying to get people to recognize the distinction might help. The (straw?) Libertarian ideal of "recreational McNukes" is actually a serious problem that we need to avoid if we possibly can.

This might be a bit out of your intended scope of your AMA, apologies if so. But, what's wrong with the US military?

That is pretty loaded and probably needs some elaboration, but from an outsider perspective, it seems like I hear a lot of stories about e.g. lowering intellectual and physical standards, projects that are wildly overbudget and delayed, and general screw ups. Are these reflective of real changes in the US military? Does it vary by branch or organizational unit? Are other countries running into similar problems?

And, supposing there are real problems, what would you do to fix them, if you stayed in it long enough and earned enough promotions to have some clout? To what extent could political leadership drive improvements?

Tough to say. Militaries are all dysfunctional in some way or another. The US would seem to be one of the least dysfunctional in some areas, and the most in others. The worst is the absolute shitpile of money that gets wasted by the MIC, but we're Americans and rich, so even the scandals about five hundred dollar hammers and the like just washes downstream.

I don't think the intellectual standards have anywhere to go in the downward direction. When I joined back in '01, the cutoff was a 28 on the ASVAB (think of that as a percentage), and you could get a waiver down to a 23. It's a multiple choice test. A monkey could pass, literally.

The physical standards are the victim of the push to get women into every job in the military, and god knows the ladies just can't push, run, ruck, jump or lift like dudes. They always swear they're going to maintain the standards, then women get in and fail to a person, and the standards have to change.

And the difference is not small. They've changed the test several times since I was in, but the test back in the day was the APFT. Just in the push-up section, the minimum for a male was 44 pushups (unit minimums were much higher, but the Army standard was 44). You do 43 and you're in the fat program. Do 43 three times and you get kicked out. The minimum for women of the same age was seven. Meanwhile, anything less than 75 in an Infantry unit marked you out as the weak link.

Is the current recruiting crisis also a major factor in lowering standards? What do you think is causing the recruiting crisis?

I'm not sure there is a recruiting crisis. Some people missed quota, it's not a big deal. You'll know if there's a recruiting crisis if the recruiting bonuses max out.

I've never fired a gun in my life. My dad owned some guns but never shared them with me. I've got it in my head that I should own a shotgun, rifle, and handgun, and learn to use them.

My questions:

Is my pistol/rifle/shotgun trio dumb? Which one of the three is best to start with?

Speaking of starting, what's the first place I should when I decide to actually move forward?

And finally, my biggest concern is storage. My state has storage laws, I think, and my wife has concerns, I know. My dad has a locked closet in the basement with his guns (50 years old at least), what should I expect to use?

I've never fired a gun in my life. My dad owned some guns but never shared them with me.

..how did that happen.

Three guns triples your cost, and the training will be somewhat different for each platform. I'd pick whichever one you want the most and learn to use that before branching out. Long guns (rifles and shotguns) will be easier to learn to shoot than handguns.

Starting out, I'd either take a class in basic safety/operations or find someone you know to run you through the basics.

Storage is mostly in safes. You can get relatively cheap ones for a couple hundred bucks, basically just big metal cabinets with good locks.

It's very hard to go wrong starting with a plinker 22 rifle, since you'll inevitably end up with one anyway. Fun, cheap to feed, good for basic riflery practice, and handy for farm use. Mine got more rounds through it than everything else put together before that tragic day on the lake.

Everything else can sort of build off of that.

You can get a safe, but iirc trigger locks bolted to something solid meet most(?) storage requirements to the extent I pay attention to them. (Note: this is not legal, practical, or even informed advice)

Safes are expensive, I don't have one.

It's very hard to go wrong starting with a plinker 22 rifle, since you'll inevitably end up with one anyway.

Well, if you're rich.

Poorer armies used airguns to train marksmanship, and I personally like airguns and laser cartridges / targets.

Especially the latter allows you to train drawing, sighting and firing indoors, with little hassle.

With airguns, usually you can just shoot whenever, in most sane countries, guns require travel and range fees.

True, the balistics are nothing much, but there are accurate models out there, and if you shoot 2 MOA at a coin sized target 30m away, it's almost the same as shooting 2 MOA at something man sized 300m away...

I'll also note that you should never let anyone know you have a gun safe in public, disguise it when you bring it in, etc. Massive robbery target.

Very much this. Especially in formerly high trust societies.

Do not tell people you own guns. Don't post pictures of that, don't mention it on social media, make sure kids know it and don't talk about it either.

If you've never shot a gun, you should start by trying to shoot a rifle. It is significantly more manageable than a pistol. Many ranges offer rentals, and I'd try renting an AR-15 or a small-caliber bolt-action before making any purchases.

Your best bet for learning is probably talking to an experienced shooter. Many of us like to introduce newbies. If that's not an option, look for classes. Handgun classes are the most common, but many ranges do offer "basics" for handguns or rifles.

What's your intended use case? There's nothing dumb about wanting to own multiple guns, especially for sport. If you have any expectation of needing one for self-defense, that changes the priorities.

I bought my first gun, a .308 Ruger American, a year ago. I’m looking to buy a handgun now just for fun and use at the range. I’ve never fired a handgun and don’t really know what to look for besides something fun to use and not super expensive. Any recommendations?

Canik does a pretty good line in entry-level guns. Lots of features and very good triggers for the money.

If you have consumed any of his content how legit is Paull Harrel?

Who are some of your favorite firearm youtubers?

From watching him a while, dude seems fairly legit.

I've been watching a fair amount of guntube recently, and it seems to me that while there's pretty clearly a fair whiff of the grift going on, it seems to me that a lot of the major channels are actually engaging in a pretty interesting semi-organized strategy of public outreach, attempting to raise the public profile and image of the gun community in the minds of the general public. There's a pretty wide range of content styles, but after a while one begins to percieve a sort of gradient between the fun/silliness end of guys like Demo Ranch up through the much more serious channels engaging with the serious aspects of perfecting technique or engaging with life-and-death tactical and legal questions involved in actual gunfights. From what I've seen, Paul Harrel seems middling-far into the serious end of things. Still sorta in the general interest category in terms of presentation, but focusing on more serious questions and situations.

If you're looking for more information, what sorta content are you interested in? mag-dumps into trash? History and technical info? Shooting skills? Amusement vs learnings?

I've only seen a couple of his vids, but he seemed non-crazy.

How safe are muzzle loaders? I think they seem like they might be lots of fun but am wondering if they result in more accidents from having to handle gunpowder directly.

Also do they aways use black powder or are smokeless powders typically substituted ?

Quite safe so long as you follow the protocols. The most potentially dangerous are the cap-and-ball revolvers, which can chain fire the whole cylinder if loaded improperly.

Single shot muzzies are some of the safest guns out there, it's basically impossible to blow them up. The one exception is when trying to remove a loaded ball over a squib load.

Modern blackpowder equivalents are mostly not "true" blackpowder, but give similar performance without being as corrosive, foul smelling and smoky. You can buy the real stuff from specialty manufacturers if you're going for historical accuracy, but that's really the only reason.

Fun post!

Do you wear armor while training? What are your thoughts on armor and do you have any recommendations? I've been looking at Apex and Highcom ceramic plates.

I have been thinking about buying a new gun and was looking at something on the AK platform. Do you have any recommendations? The one I was zeroing in on is the PSAK-47 GFS. If I wanted to move up a level, what would you recommend?

I do wear armor while training sometimes. I usually shoot at least one 2GAC match a year, in the armored division, and I'll train in armor during the run-up to that match. The rest of the time, no. I wear my old military SAPI vest and MICH.

Don't really have any recommendations on civilian-available armor, I haven't looked into it.

As to AK-pattern guns, let me make a recommendation that you find one in 5.56 or similar, because the formerly cheap and easily available Russian ammo is banned now, and it is quite hard to find 7.62x39 or 5.45. You can see my comment below on PSA, decent range toys, not serious duty guns. If you want a good AK, your best bet is a time machine to the mid-90s or a custom build from a reputable AK-specific shop. Best out of the box will be the Galils and Valmets, but they're a pretty long way from a standard AK, and relatively expensive.

What type of holster would you recommend for CCW a G43 on someone pretty skinny. Don't like my current one so I end up not carrying as much as I would otherwise.

That's a tough one, carry position and holster preference tend to be very personalized. A G43 is small enough to conceal a number of different ways, so you have options. Essentially, the three best are strong side IWB, Appendix IWB and pocket.

Personally, I carry Appendix, but that's mostly because I carry a larger gun and need to carry there to conceal it. It won't conceal strong side, and is far too large for a pocket.

I have a few different rigs, but my most used one is an Eidolon holster body attached to a Phlster Enigma chassis. Conceals a G19 under basketball shorts and a T-shirt, and I'm a skinny fuck too. Appendix punishes a gut, so it's best for us wraiths.

General holster advice would be awesome too, especially since he mentioned pocket carry earlier.

Hmm, this is hard because holsters are probably the least objective aspect of carry. General advice:

A decent holster costs ~$65 MSRP minimum*. Many cost $100-150. Some people can find a good deal, or a cheaper one that works for them, but for most people and most guns, that's the current price range for "reasonable quality". That said, just because a holster costs that doesn't mean it's good. Holster making is very low barrier to entry for people interested in guns, so there's a lot of companies out there and a lot of shoddy products, often with premium pricetags. I try to stick to companies with relatively long histories, over ten years at least. My personal loadout is Ravin Concealment for CCW, Safariland for duty rigs, and Red Hill Tactical for competition.

Avoid anything that says "Blackhawk" on it. SERPAS are the devil, and you need to not use them. I'll fly the partisan flag on this one, SERPA fanboys. Those things are dangerous. Cheap SERPA knockoffs are worse.

Don't be surprised if you have to try a few different holsters to find one that works for you. I went through probably six for CCW before landing on Ravin. It's often a waste of money, but there's just no substitute for actually wearing a thing every day to find out.

*Not pocket holsters, those are like twenty bucks.

I’m thinking of getting a longer range rifle. Not necessarily for hunting (but I’d like the option, for deer and possibly defensive against black bears), more for target shooting.

My goal would be able to consistently hit targets at 1000 yards.

6.5 creedmoor, or .300WM? I don’t really care about costs, or the effects of recoil on me, just interested in what is ballistically more suited to shooting bears at 1000 yards.

I have a very large property on the border of Canada and black bears are a problem here is why I include them as a question. If the answer is that neither of these are really good bear rounds, then I’m more just interested in shooting steel at 1000 yards.

.300WM is fine for smaller bear species, but not at a thousand yards. Nobody shoots live game at a grand, unless you're Saint Carlos of Hathcock.

The realistic outer limit for a talented and well-practiced amateur is 500 yards on live game. Beyond that, the delay between when you shoot and when the bullet gets there is enough for the animal to have moved some distance. Makes getting a clean kill much more difficult. Within 500 yards, the .300 is fine on black bear, with the heaviest, toughest bullets you can find. If you have bigger bear, consider going up to a .338, .35 or .45 caliber such as the .45/70. Range will likely shrink, recoil goes up, but so does the power and penetration.

I'd say you're looking for two rifles. One 6.5 Creed to shoot a thousand yards with, one bear gun. The use characteristics are quite different.

Okay good to know. I figured that range was pretty crazy to actually kill a bear, but thought I’d ask! Thanks!

Also, even if you went with the WinMag (which would probably kill a bear at 1000 yards assuming you could see/hit it), the rifle that would do this is almost certainly not the one you want to be packing around all the time in case you run into a bear.

The answer as usual is "more guns" -- get a benchrest style Creedmore (or 308 if you are not a hipster) for LR targets, and something handier for the bears.

And 500 yards is an outer limit. You really should be thinking of hunting as that 1-200 yard range. Even for bear. People take longer shots on extremely flighty mountain deer.

Yeah, I don't want to seem too condescending, but most people have no idea how difficult even a three hundred yard shot is. Anyone who can tag live game at 500 is probably in the five thousand best shots in the country. But every goddamned customer wants a 500 yard gun and cartridge.

Given your military experience and qualifications, what's your take on the NGSW? I'd be interested in knowing your thoughts on the LMG and service rifle aspects of it, as well as your thoughts on the entire program.

Not OP, however I'll offer both steelman and criticism of the M5. I suspect justifications for certain decisions come from a mix of both, but I can't really prove any of this- just what I've picked up.

First, the steelman.

Body armor is something the US Army (and NATO in general) spent the last 20 years learning the value of- soldiers (especially volunteers) are very expensive, and being able to survive anything short of a heavy machine gun cartridge (or explosive) at least once really does change the game.

Due to advances in materials science, that armor has become cheap enough to make that the US fears its enemies being able to do the same thing. And China, on paper at least, has the ability to manufacture that kind of armor in very large quantities, so if the US wants to use military force on a Chinese ally/customer (or more cynically, its own citizens), they want to make sure that what they shoot at stays dead.

The US has no weapon in inventory (short of .50 BMG) that can get through that armor, whose effectiveness is defined by, well, the fact that it stops them all. So if they want to make sure that they can get through that armor into the man wearing it, they need a more powerful cartridge (and suitable projectile), and there's no reason to think the proper loading of .277 Fury can't do that. If it couldn't, I don't believe it would ever have been accepted as a standard cartridge- .308 is already good enough.

Also, yes, weight matters, but it matters a bit less the more mechanized your force is. This may come back to bite them once you run into the situation the Russians found themselves in early last year, but the Americans are arguably unique among military powers in their ability to avoid that.

Is it going to be totally useless if the US lands on Taiwan and it's all urban warfare? Of course it is, but much like the F-35, you have to keep funding new development so that when war does break out you still have enough engineers that remember how to solve the problems the next war brings. All rifles are inherently designed with the last war in mind- and you can't really escape that- but at least committing to buying some interesting ideas in peacetime means you have businesses that can bring new knowledge to bear faster than the enemy, and that's a big deal to the extent that equipment helps win wars.

Next, the criticism.

The US Army always looks to get back to its cultural ideal of high single-shot accuracy even though modern warfare really isn't like that. High desert warfare, where one needs both a rifle for kicking in doors and dealing with PKMs at 800 meters within the span of about 20 seconds, is one of those things that intermediate cartridges inherently don't work as well for (they were optimized for fighting within 100 meters, and capable out to 300) and thus gives certain members of the bureaucracy ammunition to declare the system a failure, and invalidate the reasons for being adopted in the first place.

(Note that the other army currently looking into .277 Fury/6.8x51 is Australia's, whose geography is arguably tailor-made for a round and rifle like this- the fact the PLA is not very far away doesn't hurt. The US army, on the other hand, needs something that isn't just good at defending a whole lot of nothing.)

The M5 has a real problem with this- much of the point of making a round low-recoil is to enable rapid follow-up shots, and you can't really do that with the .277 Fury, especially when you're running the hottest armor-piercing ammunition (this is also arguably a problem with all the .308 stopgap rifles that were adopted mid-2000s to deal with the above problem). Which I suspect is half the reason why they don't even issue that ammunition in general (the other being the expense of the armor-piercing projectiles themselves)- they have the ability to do it, but it's also a bit too much for the rifle to handle so the ammunition they're given is down-loaded somewhat.. Plus, you can't carry as much ammunition for the same weight, so if your supply lines mess up (or your vehicle goes down) you're in more trouble than you otherwise would be.

And it's not like "we haven't fought a real war in 60+ years, and everyone who actually had relevant combat experience in those fights are well into retirement if not dead" isn't something that prevents a good solution from being proactively adopted- we saw this in the lead up to WW1 with rifles designed to kill Afghans and Africans at extreme distances and, in matches against a peer adversary, the rifles had to be longer than the enemy's so that your bayonet would stab them before they stabbed you. And then WW1 was 4 years of proving all of that was completely irrelevant, even though it took them that long to figure out how to make a sub-machine gun.

It's not going to be the next service rifle even though they say it is; but it's also not actually a bad rifle and its developments will likely be important further down the line.

NGSW

Wacky opinion time!

I'm quite skeptical of new service guns, just because there's been a new one every year for three decades and a grand total of not one of the goddamned things has replaced our inventory of M4s, 249s and 240s. Some see limited use by high-speed units, some get orders from specops etc.

The most interesting thing about the NGSW system is the optic. The rest is yet more MIC bullshitting and wasting money. All these "new infantry arms" are a boondoggle for arms manufacturers. Billions of dollars to not replace the M16, or to marginally improve some esoteric aspect of the platform. The M5 is not going to be the standard infantry arm of the US military. It's too heavy, the performance isn't a big enough improvement, and there is no way in hell they're going to ditch the 5.56 and 7.62. It might see limited use as a DMR. That's my best guess anyway.

The 249 is the weak link in the three, and replacing that would probably be the easiest, but once again, it needs to match the ammo for the service rifle, which is not going to be 6.8.

The 240 is damn near perfect. The only way you could possibly improve it is to reduce weight.

Understand that the media push around "new service weapons" is a marketing strategy for the civilian market, not the military. SIG is trying to sell a pile of eight-thousand-dollar AR-15s with experimental ammunition that you can't even buy yet, and an optic system that won't be available to civilians for some time and will be probably another eight grand when it is.

What was your opinion on the Textron submission?

I don't really have one. I ignore most of these trials and the media hype that goes with them. It's all marketing.

What are the best AR-15 optics for close range shooting and hitting targets up to 300-400 yards away? Either one that does both, or a pair to get. $2000 budget, but would prefer less than that if the quality is still there.

Friends who were in Iraq and Afghanistan spoke highly of ACOGs and Aimpoint Pros in the late 2000s, but it has been well over a decade since they were in the military and none really shoot recreationally. Have been major advancements since the late 2000s in AR optics available on the civilian market?

I'd also be interested in plates and carrier recommendations, something that could stop the most common versions of 5.56, 7.62x39, 5.45x39 loads that militaries use. Whole lot of sketchy information on plates, spalling, etc out there. Again <$2000 budget.

I'll take a crack at answering the body armor & plate carrier question. Now, speaking as someone who is fully committed to the LARPer8r lifestyle (plate carrier, NODs, the whole kit and kaboodle), a plate carrier is largely useless to civilians in 99% of cases. Even in a potential civil war, it's largely useless if you're not a full-time front-line fighter. Your use case just never involves "okay hang on let me go grab my plate carrier out of my trunk before the ambush" because it's vastly more important that you be able to ditch your gun and blend in with the civilian population as quickly as possible.

That having been said, running around in a plate carrier and shooting at things is a lot of fun so don't think I'm saying don't buy one. I'm just saying it's not practical gear, it's fun gear. Nothing wrong with that, like I said I own one.

My personal carrier is a First Spear Strandhogg, which I like because I run hot and it is one of the more comfortable plate carriers if you run hot. A lot of people swear by the JPC 2.0 and that's also a fantastic option. Anything made by First Spear, Crye, LBX Tactical, or Spiritus Systems is going to be good to go. Buy with confidence and don't look back. In terms of plates to put in your plate carrier, avoid steel plates. They're the ones that can spall, which is what you've heard about. Spalling is an effect where a bullet impacts the plate, and fragments, shooting shrapnel straight up and down the surface of the plate. Imagine what is directly above and below your plate carrier. Now imagine those surfaces are impacted by shrapnel traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of sound.

No steel.

Plenty of manufacturers will advertise an "anti-spall" coating that's supposed to make it so your junk and jugular don't get perforated by the aforementioned shrapnel, but there's a perfectly good other option out there that doesn't run that risk. Ceramic. There's a reason that all of the big names in armor make ceramic plates. Hesco and RMA are the two biggest producers of civilian body armor on the market. Your stated threat (commonly used intermediate cartridges) will be stopped by either level IV or level III+ armor. Level IV is an industry specific term and you have to be careful here. Body armor actually has a government certification process under the National Institute of Justice, or NIJ. NIJ certification is the gold star for plates. Unscrupulous manufacturers will sell NIJ compliant armor, which is not the same thing. However, the current NIJ standard (0101.06) does not include something equivalent to III+, it goes I, II, III, IV in order from least protection to most. Level III will not reliably stop M855, one of the most common loads of 5.56. Thus manufacturers came up with III+, which is lighter and thinner than comparable level IV armor, and can stop M855, but isn't quite as protective as level IV. Reputable manufacturers will sell III+ and people trust them because their other plates are all NIJ certified.

Personally I have RMA level IV plates and I'm very happy with them. But if you buy any level III+ or IV plates from a good manufacturer, you'll be fine. I will say that Hesco has had some recalls due to failed NIJ audits in recent years, so you might want to stick with RMA. Their plates are a little thicker and heavier on average than Hesco's, but they also have a rock-solid reputation. If you're looking for cheap and serviceable, the RMA 1155 is a level IV plate that costs $159.99 a plate, or they have III+ for $284.99 – $374.99 per plate. They also always have a 10% off code "RMAPROTECTS".

The most flexible for your use would be an LPVO (low-powered variable optic). On one-power, this will be nearly as fast as a red dot, plus it gives you the option of magnification up to 6,8, or 10 power. You can get solid ones for under $500, good ones for a grand, and some of the best for ~$2K. A lot of the very nice ones are also very heavy, so YMMV. Vortex, Trijicon, Steiner, etc. are good options, Leupold LPVOs are underwhelming. I haven't tested the Eotech Vudu line, but they get good press.

The ACOGs are very nice, but not as flexible. You get a fixed magnification, which slows you down at close range and depending on optic, may limit your range. A standard 4X one will get you out to 400 yards just fine, but most people prefer higher magnification. Aimpoints are simple, rugged and reliable. They're not distance sights.

I had to duck out of this question for another person here, I'm just not up on civilian-available body armor, or what's good.

What do you think of "red dot plus flip magnifier" for mostly-short-range shooting? Worth thinking about, or too messy?

Trying to decide if it's worth getting a variable optic or just buying the matching magnifier for my current dot.

Personal opinion incoming, plenty of people disagree with me on this. I don't find that combo to be all that worthwhile.

It does give you the option of the fastest target acquisition (red dot), plus a bit of magnification. But the magnification is usually only 3X, which isn't going to add all that much range. Plus, it's awkward when folded off to the side, the combo weighs more than a LPVO, and for comparable optical quality, is twice as expensive.

If you're gonna combo and don't mind the weight and cost, I'd say the LPVO with an offset reflex dot is a better way.

Here's an article that covers a bit of this stuff.

https://www.arbuildjunkie.com/offset-red-dots-on-the-ar-15-with-steve-yeti-fisher/

Thank you for the response and recommendations. What about AR optics for indoors and pretty close range shooting for three gun matches and the like?

Red dots all day, errday. Holographic if you're about that life, but functionally the same thing.

Zero magnification, little to no parallax, best speed.

There's any number of good ones out there, from the premium Aimpoint and Eotech to solid offerings from Primary Arms, Holosun, Vortex etc.

If you don't need ruggedness, and want the best features for the least money, I'm gonna recommend Holosun. They really are the innovators in red dots, you get stuff no one else* has for a very reasonable price. If you operate operationally on operations in an operational environment, these are probably not for you, but you wouldn't be asking me anyway. My "burn em down" competition rifle has a 510C for the main optic, and it is just hilarious to use. It's the closest thing to a video game reticle you can put on your gun currently.

For a more SHTF build, get an Aimpoint or something similar. Reliability will be more important than features.

*solar panels, swappable reticles, different color reticles, auto-brightness (doesn't work, but they have it) etc.

Do you have blue eyes?

If I'm wearing blue, yes.

How effective can you be in 1 v. n situations if you are a better shot?

For example, Let's say you have around 1000 hours of practice shooting in the range. Your home got invaded by 3 armed gangsters who know how to use a gun but have maybe around 50-100 hours of actual training each. In a physical fight, even the best fighters will lose 1v2 average guys with intent to kill. How true is this for guns?

I would assume the range is a factor here; the closer, the worse, for obvious reasons. How far do you have to be till you can reliably win a 1 v n firefight?

What about cover? How much would that help? How would the situation play out in an open field vs. lets say 50-100m distance, everyone using glocks, with road barriers and e-boxes for cover?

50-100 hours of actual training each.

This would be wildly unrealistic, most criminals have no training at all. If they actually had military or a hundred hours of training, and were serious, willing to risk their lives for each other and dedicated, one person doesn't stand a chance. Luckily, criminals rarely meet these criteria.

Every extra armed combatant increases the odds against a lone defender exponentially. But I think it is extremely doable, if very risky. To put numbers to it, my Blake Drill is low two seconds (~2.2), which is a draw followed by two shots on each of three targets at seven yards. Given a two-second opening, I'm fairly confident rolling those dice. From the drop? Maybe not.

Here's a very good shooter with a race rig for comparison:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Np__DNfPE08

The most likely scenario is the defender shoots it out with the first guy, and if he wins that round, the rest run. If he doesn't, he's fucked.

Here's a 3 on 1 that goes something like that:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SE0TckyzojI

Here's a vid of an armed pot store employee shooting it out with four armed dudes from the drop, he survived, but was shot twice, one attacker died.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ehf5Zr3gn8w

That channel is really interesting, and surprisingly non-political somehow.

Well, if you watch a lot of them, it's not really a secret that most gun people lean right, but that can mean a lot of different things. The main guy is a former pastor as well, so there's some relatively vague religious references sometimes.

The ASP channel is truly a great resource for anyone interested in what real-world self defense actually looks like. I've never seen anything like it, there's thousands of videos and tons of data there. Part of gun culture 2.0 was an increased interest in applying the scientific method to civilian defensive encounters and using that data to structure training for best effectiveness.

I've no idea what the answer to your question is in general and I'd also be very curious to hear it. But as a digression,

1000 hours of practice shooting in the range

cover

It depends on the details of that 1000 hours and on what they've been learning ("on the job", I'm guessing?) for 50-100, but in this scenario it's not impossible that the gangsters are better trained.

"The element reported as the single most important factor in the officer's survival during an armed confrontation was cover. Because of this determination, use of cover is included in firing line exercises and is stressed by the firearms instructors. As has been pointed out, in a stress situation an officer is likely to react as he was trained to react.

There is almost always some type of cover available but it may not be recognized as such without training."

If you're twice as good a shot, but their instincts make them give you much less than half the target sizes to shoot at, they might be getting the first hits in.

It's tempting to think "I wouldn't do anything as dumb as ignoring cover in a real fight, just because I never take cover at the range", but adrenaline doesn't make you smarter at making decisions, it just makes you access your trained decisions faster. The Station Nightclub Fire bouncer wouldn't let anyone through the backstage exit because it was supposed to be an absolute rule that that was for the band only. Agents trained to holster their gun in between each shot at the range would find themselves automatically holstering their guns in the middle of firefights. The craziest story I've heard is that some disarmament drills disallow directly passing weapons back and forth when repeating a drill, because after being thoroughly inadvertently trained in how to "disarm the attacker, then pass the knife back for another go", that was what someone did in an actual attack.

The craziest story I've heard is that some disarmament drills disallow directly passing weapons back and forth when repeating a drill, because after being thoroughly inadvertently trained in how to "disarm the attacker, then pass the knife back for another go", that was what someone did in an actual attack.

Yup. My old dojo taught us not to hand weapons back during drills for exactly this reason.

Muscle memory is a hell of a thing. Another (possibly apocryphal) story we were told is of a police officer who was gunned down during a shootout because adrenaline kicked in and he started picking up spent shell casings, exactly as they'd been made to do at the range.

heard that one as well, and I'd like to believe it's one of those myths that just gets passed around. Unpleasantly plausible, given the consequences.

The craziest story I've heard is that some disarmament drills disallow directly passing weapons back and forth when repeating a drill, because after being thoroughly inadvertently trained in how to "disarm the attacker, then pass the knife back for another go", that was what someone did in an actual attack.

Seems very plausible. My old MMA gym prohibited helping your sparring partner get up after knocking them down in training after during an actual competition a member threw an opponent to the mat then reflexively bent over and reached out a hand to help him up. The opponent took advantage of it and ended up winning.

Wow, as a gun nut I'm frustrated/jealous there's interest in a dedicated post for this, nice!

Monthly themotte's sargent at arms post?

Re: Military Service

If you were dealing with a ~115IQ teenager graduating high school at 17, open to a few years of service/misery, would ROTC contract+ College then commission make more sense, or first a 3 year Enlistment (assume desired MOS due to prepped ASVAB, Eagle Scout rank bump) + Guard/Reserves during College paid by GI bill?

Or screw either, not worth time and stress, that answer makes tons of sense too.

A part of the calculus that throws a slight wrench into the decision is that the $0 VA loan can go for a million and can be used on a 4-plex (assume parents of said kid built credit to 725 by making them an authorized user on a credit card that mostly makes utility payments).

I'd say the kid should be really certain it's what he wants to do, and if so, commit fully. If you go in thinking of it like a job that you'll go home from and have a life, it's a rude awakening. You've got to embrace the suck.

Plan on not getting married or having kids while active, and take precautions. There's a wanna-be Dependapotamus behind every barracks shrub. The extra pay ain't worth it. Military life is hell on families, deployments are worse. Last platoon I had, the divorce rate was 100% within six months of getting back.

As to the question: if it's career advice, ROTC>Active Officer Corps is the best for long-term prospects. Enlisted is a piratical bunch of lower- and under-class dicks, pricks, assholes and lunatics, has all the shit jobs and are the only real soldiers. Go there to fuck around and find out. Avoid the Guard and Reserves if you can, they're shit units and you never get promoted.

Whether it's worth it....it is to some people. A lot more think it is, and find out it isn't. I always said eighty percent of the military shouldn't be there. They are not cut out for the life. It was worth it to me, but that's probably a character flaw.

That might exceed the scope of your intendend AMA, but is that really workable? A society needs people to defend it, and if those people can't have families/kids, aside from the obvious cultural issues the army has at the moment (it's really, really unpopular among large swathes of the young population), I don't see how we can long-term retain a decently sized army. Also, aren't army families (multiple generations of army membership) in america allegedly really common? What changed? Or would you see army membership as a strictly young man's game, so they can still have families/kids afterwards?

Also, aren't army families (multiple generations of army membership) in america allegedly really common?

They are.

It's no guarantee of quality though, as the recent f'pupravage' fiasco illustrates.](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/14/army-soldiers-under-investigation-wearing-bondage-/)

That might exceed the scope of your intendend AMA, but is that really workable?

Nothing about present-day United States is long-term workable. But seeing as in most armies soldiers serve 4-8 years and then get out, it's really no big deal. There's even services that prohibit marriage to common soldiers, e.g. French Foreign legion. You can marry after 8 years or if you make it to an NCO rank, I believe.

Infantry work is very much a young man's game, and in most of the military you'll be out of the field long before thirty. A twenty-eight year old infantryman is probably the platoon sergeant, in charge of thirty to fifty guys, and rarely in harm's way. Officers are out of the field within two or three years of going active. There's plenty of room for people to have families, but it's a really bad idea for lower enlisted in their first couple enlistments. It's practically a comedy when you start offering poor, stupid kids triple pay if they can knock up some hambeast. My first team leader was on his third marriage, with four kids and I had to buy him beer because he wasn't twenty-one yet.

Or would you see army membership as a strictly young man's game, so they can still have families/kids afterwards?

This. My family is a long series of soldiers, but few of us were married or had kids while we were active. One of my brothers was married while he was in, but he was an officer and it was still a close thing. My other brother and I didn't marry for over a decade after we got out.

As to whether all this is workable in the long run, I suspect not. People get paid in power, money or status. The military has the guns. If you won't pay them in money or status, they'll just take it in power and we'll be back to the days of the military crowning leaders.

Have a question on training and self-evaluation. I got some basic pistol courses and been practicing on the range from time to time for a while, and I think I am doing kinda OK, but I see various flaws in my shooting and I am not sure how to proceed to get better. Most of non-beginner trainings I've see around are for things like concealed carry and situations that arise from that, which I am currently less interested as I do not plan to carry, at least for now. I feel like just books and videos can only get me so far because they won't show me what I am in particular doing wrong or how I could fix my flaws. Any advice on this and how to improve? Am I thinking about it wrong or missing something?

What sort of shooting are you trying to get better at? Just basic pistol marksmanship?

Yes, mostly marksmanship, target shooting.

You can trawl Youtube, there's a fair bit there, often quite specific. How to grip a gun, how to pull a trigger etc. There's a lot of discussion on the competition shooting subreddit, mostly action shooting, but other disciplines as well.

A warning, many people think in terms of a technique that they learn once and it changes the way they shoot. Reality is much slower. Takes time and reps to build skills. Some people have more hand-eye coordination and need less, but it's still significant. Principles are more important than techniques. The principle is to pull the trigger without moving the sights. Whatever lets you do that is "correct".

Another is measurable results, and tracking those over time. I keep a range journal, my targets get filed, notated etc. For simple accuracy, this can be measured in group size at distance. Four inches at seven yards is decent. Four inches at fifteen yards is good. Four inches at twenty-five is the "practical accuracy" standard. Anyone can achieve this relatively quickly (a year or two) with the right training and practice, some much faster.

Finally, consider private training. It can be surprisingly affordable, depending on area and instructor. I've done this a couple times, and found it some of my better spent training budget. You get so much more when it's just you, one friend and a coach. One day of personalized coaching is worth a week of big classes, IMO.

what's your thoughts on dry-fire as a low-cost training supplement?

Dry fire is the training. If you're supplementing with it, you're not doing enough. 9:1 dry to live fire is my rule of thumb.

The way I explain it is dry fire is class, live fire is quiz day. That's when you find out if you learned what you needed to in dry fire.

A very interesting rule, which crystalizes a lot of things I've been hearing lately. I don't know if I'm just dense, or if this is a more recent development, but this really didn't seem to be the general advice when I was coming up in the gun culture. I wish it had been.

The recent development has been gun culture 2.0 slowly rediscovering sport as a test bed for training practices. Serious competitors have always trained like this, it just wasn't common knowledge or how civilians were trained. Civilians looked to military or police training, not sport. Now there's a lot more cross-training. The sport guys train the tactical guys on raw weapon handling and the tactical guys train the sport shooters how not to die while you're doing all that fancy shit. Special forces units are contracting top sport shooters to come train their guys and design parts of the training curriculum. This in turn feeds back to the trainers and their civilian clients. You've got military guys joining the sports, and sport shooters joining the military (Army Marksmanship Team, etc.).

I kind of want to shoot an AR-15 for kicks, and I can rent one at the local gun club. Cool. But uh, I have never shot any rifles other than my dad's single-shot .22, and I'm embarrassed to ask for some stranger at the range to show me how to use the gun. So, is there any sort of good guide for "here's how to use an AR-15 for complete noobs"? I took an intro to pistol shooting class there (which was very helpful as I had never shot a pistol before), but they don't have anything comparable for the AR. I figure the internet has to have some info though.

The army has been making noob friendly videos for several generations now.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=iN_W2UJutss

So, is there any sort of good guide for "here's how to use an AR-15 for complete noobs"?

The other suggestions are solid, but I'd add one additional thing. Use the videos and such to show you where the major controls are (mag release, bolt release, charging handle, safety) and how they function. When you rent the actual gun, before you start loading magazines, run through the functions with a dry mag. Insert and eject a mag, charge the bolt, drop the bolt, work the safety, do a couple reps to get a clear idea of how it feels to work the gun while maintaining safe handling. The charging handle and bolt release in particular can require a surprising amount of force compared to everyday objects, and you're going to be working the former while holding the gun by the grip; get a feel for operating it while keeping the gun pointed in a safe direction and your finger off the trigger. A few reps with a dry gun can save the discomfort of trying to figure out how to work an unfamiliar firearm that's already loaded.

The AR is great fun, and significantly easier to manage than a novice might expect.

When I was first getting started, I was in your exact situation and asked the guy manning the rental counter. Or maybe he asked "have you shot one of these before?" Either way, he gave a competent rundown.

Alternately, @yofuckreddit has the right of it, and a lot of shooters like teaching new people. I tend to drag along family members or coworkers when I go. Though if anyone here is in the Dallas area and wants to learn, send me a message!

Shooting an AR is a blast. Asking a stranger is less weird than you think, so it's not a bad option... but there's a chance you'll talk to someone that actually doesn't know what they're talking about.

If you know anyone even casually who's a gun person ask them to come with you for your first time. I can virtually promise you they will. We love taking people out to the range for their first rifle experience.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=mL-ZzgwkuzE

This channel has a lot of great stuff for new and intermediate shooters.

There is a somewhat obscure bit of the gun control debate I’d welcome a legitimate steelman for: concealed carry on mass transit.

I live in a US city that is rather notorious for high crime rates, and grew up in a family that was…dad and grandpa were hunters held in very high regard, which is a long story, but I grew up familiar with guns. When there was a debate about concealed carry on the mass transit systems here, notably the trains, my instinct was to sneer, because superficially it seemed like bravado. But then past that, it seemed totally unworkable to me, because I just can’t picture myself getting a good solid bead on an attacker in one of those swaying clanking metal tubes.

Put another way, besides “feeling” that guns on trains are a bad idea, it also seems like concealed carry in those situations would end up with more friendly fire accidents than dead muggers. (Note: I’m a big-city liberal but also have absolutely no inherent problems mowing down criminals, especially after a robbery nearby where some bastard fatally shot the victim’s dog while out walking.) As someone who has had proper training, and not just flushing quail: any thoughts?

Before addressing whether armed self-defense is practical on mass transit, I think the more important issue is how too many over-thought regulations makes CCW highly impractical. In real life, when an individual is choosing to leave their house to go about their business, they either choose to strap on a gun, or don't. If they do, then they're going to be armed over the course of everywhere they go and everything they do doing that trip - it's not like the gun just disappears when it's inconvenient. If there's someplace on the way that they're not allowed to carry at, they have to either avoid that place or mode of transportation, or carry anyways and take the risk. If you ban carry on mass transit, then you're effectively also banning it for everywhere anybody might want to go via mass transit.

Now, how effective is it? It's pretty much never going to be necessary or justified to shoot along a whole train, whether it's empty or full. Any self-defense is basically going to be at touching distance. Think more like this Joker clip than a 25-yard range (the beginning is justified, but chasing down and executing the guy who ran away, not so much). If your primary objective was self-defense on trains, you might be at least as well served by training empty-handed martial arts or other weapons like knives or Kubotans or something like that. Having a gun might be helpful in some possible situations there, but it's probably going to be at contact range, which is a whole different type of gunfighting to train.

Another thing to remember - if you're carrying a gun, than any fight you get in is now a gunfight, regardless of what you might have intended. Did someone just call you whatever slur pisses you off the most? You better learn to shrug it off and walk away, because if you tell them "fuck off, asshole" and it ends up escalating into a fight where you draw or shoot, you might well be considered the bad guy legally speaking since you didn't do everything possible to deescalate the situation. You have the power to end conflicts with lethal force, but along with that power comes the responsibility to try your best to deescalate any confrontation that doesn't justify that.

Great question, I'll take a stab too.

  • A lot of people believe that Defensive Gun Use (DGU) involves high-accuracy shots from ~25 yards. This is... not the case. They're still incredibly high-stress and having training is important, but the distances we're talking about are < 7 yards. On Mass Transit, nobody will be trying to get a headshot from across the car (hopefully). It will be an up-close confrontation. Bystander hits come from inaccuracy and overpenetration.

    • As /u/JTarrou mentioned, statistically CCW holders are (brutally and hilariously in a laugh-to-not-cry way) far more cautious and accurate than police officers. The difference is significant.

    • Regarding overpenetration, a carrying best practice is to use expensive anti-personnel ammunition with high expansion and controlled penetration designed to kill one person as quickly as possible. Neither of these is 100% foolproof but it's a point to be made.

  • Mass Transit is a hive of scum, villainy, and harassment, and it's gotten worse the past two years. Not carrying on mass transit is pretty much not carrying at all.

    • For better or for worse, the attitude in the CCW community is "Better judged by 12 than carried by six", a pithy / trite quip depending on who you ask. What it means concretely is that many people who have already gone through a background check, mandatory training, etc. are doing their best to be law-abiding but will also rely on their concealment working well in some "Gun Free Zones". People have guns on mass transit all the time.

  • Like all CCW liberalization over the past 20 years, the doomsday wild west doomsday that hath been prophesized has simply never materialized. 6-12% of this country has a permit, and 2% of them carry every day. Meanwhile, crime rates have dropped and no serious problems have been identified in CCW holders as a group. Even the trivial effort required to obtain a permit in many states is acting as a reasonably effective filter. What I'd consider great criteria for CCW permits is another discussion entirely (TL;DR: I'd support more if I thought they'd be implemented fairly across the US)

Well, I support being allowed to carry in mass transit, but it does potentially present a difficult tactical problem. The more people present, the worse it is. Of course, the same goes for any attackers, but presumably they don't care as much about precision and missing the bystanders. It must be left to the individual to decide if his skills are up to the task, or whether it's less risky to lose a wallet.

My main complaint would be that banning carry on mass transit means that people who use mass transit can't carry. It's not really about the trains themselves, it's about all the people who use them to get places. This is the problem with patchwork carry laws. You can carry a gun, but not into state, local or federal buildings, not within half a mile of a school, hospital, library or theater, no buildings that hold over 2,000 people, not on public transport, etc. etc. They may all seem reasonable in isolation, but it isn't long before it has effectively outlawed carry, while technically being "legal".

Edit: As a general rule, concealed carriers hit fewer bystanders than the cops. Whatever concerns you have for private citizens defending themselves, if you're ok with cops having guns, private citizens are safer, more accurate, even more law abiding. There's a lot of stupid stuff that gets done with guns, and very little of it is done by the people who cared enough to get licensed to carry.

Tell me everything about hearing protection.

....how about some things?

The most important bit is the NRR (noise reduction rating), which is essentially how much noise (in decibels) they lop off the top. Don't bother with anything less than 25, 30 is better. After that, you're paying for comfort or electronics. Comfort is somewhat important, but moreso if you're wearing them for long periods of time.

Shooting indoors is much louder than shooting outside, consider wearing in-ear foam plugs as well as muffs. This is known as "double plugging", despite there being only one set of plugs, and the term sounding vaguely dirty.

Pro Fo Sho makes some very good ear protection that is reasonably comfortable for twenty bucks a set or so.

Is there a functional difference between hp for sustained sounds (ie lawnmower) vs overpressure? Shooting earmuffs I see tend to be much thinner than earmuffs you see at the hardware store.

Is ANC for that level of protection hokum? I see some electronic earbuds that claim (to me) unbelievable NRRs.

Is ANC for that level of protection hokum? I see some electronic earbuds that claim (to me) unbelievable NRRs.

I don't see how ANC can provide any better protection than just wearing the buds while they are turned off, but... maybe?

Most electronic shooting muffs are just regular muffs with a mic and speaker in there, which cuts out at a certain noise level -- which I think is fine so long as the "cut-out" part happens fast enough. (which you would probably notice if it weren't)

I don't see how ANC can provide any better protection

ANC produces sound that cancels incoming sound via destructive interference. It's ability to cut sound is therefore limited by how loud of a sound it can produce and how well it matches the incoming sound. It's a surreal experience when it works right. But I have doubts that it could match the volume of a gunshot.

I know how it works, which is why I said maybe -- but yeah, I don't think tiny earbuds can match gunshot volumes, and most of these buds don't really fit that well (compared to earplugs) so there will be a lot of leakage needing cancellation.

Maybe good for .223 though? I'm kind of a buckaroo on this anyways, and don't usually bother at all for 22lr. OTOH I don't mind my electronic muffs, and don't have many rifles set up for a stock-crawling cheek-weld -- so there's not much point.

Is there a functional difference between hp for sustained sounds (ie lawnmower) vs overpressure? Shooting earmuffs I see tend to be much thinner than earmuffs you see at the hardware store.

That's mostly to let people get a better cheek weld on long guns without lifting the muffs off the ear. It still doesn't work all that great, and unless they are pricey, the NRR suffers. If you're only shooting handguns, regular safety muffs may be a good option. Overpressure really isn't an issue for firearms usage.

Is ANC for that level of protection hokum? I see some electronic earbuds that claim (to me) unbelievable NRRs.

I'm not really sure. ANC does cancel sound audibly, but the sound is still happening, so I'm not sure if that can still damage hearing.

Should I get something better than those ribbed, earwax-scraping earplugs I've worn to the range before, then? I feel like they give me pretty good protection, but they are a little fussy to get right.

Personally I don't like the rubber ribbed inserts, I prefer the foamy plugs. Either work, but I find it harder to get a good seal with the rubber ones.

Muffs are the easiest, and as I said, you can get pretty good ones for twenty or twenty-five bucks. Worth the investment if you shoot even semi-regularly.

Do you have any opinions on peltors or whatever other active hearing protection things are out there now? Do you think they make situational awareness better on the range/in competitions?

No, I don't. Peltors are really nice, I have a very nice set of MSAs, but the electronics broke a couple years back and I never bothered to get it fixed. They're very comfortable, which is nice on a long competition day, but you just don't need the electronics, and in fact I found it a distraction. Electronics can be handy situationally, but for normal shooting and competition, save your money and buy comfort.

Foam plugs are extremely effective. I don't think the ribbing is doing anything for you compared to comfortable expanding foam plugs.

If you want more hearing pro, keep in mind that big over-ear equipment is going to mess up your cheek weld on most rifles and shotguns. Electronic buds are going to be expensive. Over years of (admittedly just comp/target shooting) I've relied on over-ear for pistol-only events and foam plugs for any long guns.

Thanks for posting this, I'll try to get those questions together.

How do you feel about the various single stack 9s vs A Glock? I've been carrying the former for years, was considering moving up. Is that your regular vs suit-carry option?

Well, let me give two answers.

Single-stack 9s are somewhat out of fashion. Most people prefer to carry a micro-sized gun and the current hotness is double-stack micros like the P365, Shield Plus and the Hellcat. All are decent, personally I like the SIG.

But, I carry a Glock 19. G42 for pocket carry.

Thanks. Apparently I'm very out of fashion as well as out of the loop! Hadn't even heard of the new micros.

You don't want to swan into the gala in last year's handgun do you? The EMBARRASSMENT!? :P

Jokes aside, the new micros are amazing. You get a gun the same or smaller than an old Shield that carries almost twice the ammunition. And while bouncy, they aren't horrible to shoot. There's even a big P365 Macro that's about the same size as the Glock 43X, but carries seventeen rounds instead of ten. Really exciting part of the market right now.

What's the cheapest acceptably good 9mm carbine?

Tough to say, depends on your usage.

For fun at the range? Hi Point will go bang and make trash bounce.

For a serious home defense gun? Hard to say, most PCCs are a bit finicky. Stribog maybe?

For competition? Ruger for casuals, JP Enterprises for srs bznss.

Have you ever shot the MP5? The HK single-shot version is "available" now, and it seems grossly overpriced for a PCC but I've heard it's very fun to shoot.

I have, and it is a fun gun to shoot, especially the suppressed version. The controls are a bit strange though, and it's hard to attach accessories to it. It is wildly overpriced, like all HKs, but that's only because you suck and HK hates you.

https://monsterhunternation.com/2007/10/09/hk-because-you-suck-and-we-hate-you/

Stribog maybe?

Did they fix the feeding issues with hollow points? If so, I might need to take a trip to the LGS.

Thanks for the insight!

I love listening to mike "hazzard" and his campfire stories about military. One of them was about "best military experiences" which as it happens were not that many compared to the negative ones. Would you say that your time in a military was similar?

I had a lot of good times in the military, lot of bad ones, and a shitton of just bureaucratic fuckery. The bad ones stick with you more than the good ones, I think. Either in a "listen to the shit I lived through" sort of way, where it's kind of funny in retrospect or a traumatic sense.

But yeah, lots of good times, crazy stories and all that. Barracks parties, brawls with neighboring units, Zonk days, long weekends to Vegas, Venice, Budapest. Some of the training is awesome, if difficult. Even deployment and combat have their charms, for some of us. All the best days of my life were bringing my guys back in, all in one piece.

Considering that you and mike are both small arms repairman for a second there I thought you were the guy )

Nah, I was never the armorer, that was a terrible job :P

Is there a noticeable difference in wounding potential between a FMJ round and a wadcutter, assuming similar ballistics -mass, velocity ?

Not much, probably a slight edge to the wadcutter. JHP beats them both, badly.

Asking because JHP was effectively banned here until very recently, now requires a may-issue exemption of which many more are now on offer. E.g. EU wanted large magazines banned, so new owners need an exemption to acquire such.

Don't know if they're sensible about handing these out for JHP or magazines, though.

E.g. a may-issue exemption for machineguns was impossible to get in most counties unless cops really liked you. A basic CCW is shall-issue and easily obtainable by non-criminal people of average intelligence.

Oh yeah, might as well ask: is there still a ban/taboo against hollow-point ammo for militaries? I assume FMJ is the default, but that could also be for other reasons.

is there still a ban/taboo against hollow-point ammo for militaries?

Yes, but the spirit of that ban has been pretty thoroughly violated for the last 60 years. For comparison with other rifles firing ball ammunition, see this.

I was thinking of pistol ammo specifically, but point.

Pretty sure it's still in place, except for a few legalistic exceptions like match-grade ammo for snipers. I'd think militaries would have some concerns about sacrificing penetration as well.

In your opinion, best way to get into the AR game? I feel like it's time to get one, I don't envision the market on them improving for consumers in the near future, etc. Uses would be range toy, home defense, TEOTWAWKI/SHTF; probably never hunting, as I have guns I like for that already.

I'm in a position where I can drop what I imagine to be reasonable money on it, $800-1k shouldn't be overly problematic, but much more than that will lead to wife questions. I've shot poorly for a really long time, so I'm used to guns but no champion.

I'd actually put "aftermarket trigger" after red dot and before light in terms of things to buy.

The advice I've gotten and believe is that most ARs are the same. Even a cheap $600 PSA example has a lot more commonalities than differences with a $2k rifle. You purchase the latter for cachet or running like a dog. I've done that and am not ashamed of it, but you absolutely don't need to.

However, the change an $80-150 trigger can make in your shooting experience is fucking enormous. Hopefully most of those more expensive rifles come with a LaRue/Geissele equivalent trigger (the latter of which I've purchased at that $150 mark and love but believe the LaRue will do the same thing for $80).

No one way, but there's some solid options out there for under 1k. Offhand, Aero Precision, Ruger's MPR, even a SIG Tread if you can find one.

Get a free-floated M-lok handguard, skip the paint jobs.

Aftermarket: in order of priority sling, red dot, light. Everything else may be marginally useful, but not a game changer.

Do you have anything to say about PSA uppers that could be printed on this christian website?

Sure, they're decent for the money. IMO the best of the budget companies. You've got a slightly elevated chance of getting a lemon, but other than that, if you don't ride 'em hard and put 'em away wet, it's a fine option. It's not a duty-grade gun by any means, so it's up to you whether that meets your needs. For range toys? PSA all day baybee. For anything serious? DD, BCM etc.

If you're looking to dip your toe in the world of building ARs, PSA is your first stop. Just don't bet your life on your first homemade gun.

Hey, I've gotta get my gambling fix somewhere, and it's definitely a cheap way of doing it!

Any recommendations for a handgun training program or resources? Now that ammo prices are less insane, I'd like to more properly develop the skill.

On a related note, I've had employees at the range tell me I'm "good for a beginner, could be very good with practice". The cynic in me says this is a naked effort to get me to come spend more money, while the compliment-starved male in me wants to bask in the praise. How common is that sort of fluffing, do you think?

On a different note, I have ended up in possession of a neat inheritance of classic firearms, including some 19th century antiques. I'd like to get them cleaned up into display pieces, but formal ownership of the items is basically a gentlemen's agreement, and some of the other men in the family have expressed some vague concerns about getting ripped off or screwed over. Any suggestions for finding a reputable antique restoration gunsmith? I'd ask at the range, I feel like I'm on good terms with the owners... but they're all cops and a libertarian part of me flinches at rolling up and announcing I have a bunch of unlicensed guns of dubious legal provision in the trunk. Any insight on the legal side of that? If it matters, they belonged to my grandfather, who died unexpectedly young, so no will.

And on a geekier note, this is an Ares Predator from Shadowrun. If someone (me) wanted to have something customized to look like that, full form-over-function, what starting base would you recommend? Supposedly, the design was inspired by the gun from Robocop, which is a modified Beretta 92fs, but that's closer to what Shadowrun would consider a "light" pistol, as opposed to the Predator as the mechanical king of the heavies.

More personally, what do you use as your competition guns, and why did you pick them? Is that different from your EDC?

And on a geekier note, this is an Ares Predator from Shadowrun. If someone (me) wanted to have something customized to look like that, full form-over-function, what starting base would you recommend?

It's a small pic, but that appears to be an Ares Predator IV. Here's the whole series for reference.

The Predator I is a direct rip of the auto-9 from robocop, which is a beretta 93r with a very long barrel and barrel shroud.

The Predator II is the most conventional design in the series; it's basically a beretta 93r, with a very large, exaggerated front sight, exaggerating the angle of the frame forward of the trigger guard, and a glock-style trigger safety.

The Predator III is a redrawn version of the Predator I. It's a bit more compact due to a shorter barrel/barrel shroud, and it's been re-gubbinized to be a little less obviously derivative, but still retaining the Predator II's glock trigger.

The Predator IV design is a divergence from the previous models, and clearly not based on the beretta. The trigger and safety are copied from the 1911, and since those are two of the elements that would be the hardest to rework in a custom design, that's probably how you'd want to go. A lot of the design is greebled pretty heavily in ways that make little practical sense, but generally it looks like you have a bulked out frame forward of the trigger guard, comparable to something like booligan's Big Chungus Glock build. There's an accessory rail along the bottom of the frame, a massively oversized rear sight derived from the auto-9, and the grip is reminiscent of an EAA Witness.

Concur with @JTarrou's advice for a longslide 1911; you can even get it in 10mm, to better match the fluff specs. If you're going for maximum accuracy, you'd want to eliminate the grip safety somehow, while keeping the exaggerated beavertail; this might make the gun significantly less safe from a practical use standpoint, but for a range gun it's probably not a problem. You could get a frame CNC'd to match the 1911 internals to the fairly arbitrary external shape. There's some things I'm not sure you're going to get around, like the Predator IV's lack of an ejection port, but you might be able to get close with some sort of slide shroud.

Not the OP, but as someone with a number of antiques, I wanted to chime in;

Managing antique guns is a very contentious topic among the gun community, and a few number of people claim that trying to 'restore' any antique will just ruin the value and/or historic provenance of the gun. If you've a number of older guns/rifles, you're probably looking to less 'restore' and more preserve and/or protect.

Thankfully, this is something you can likely do yourself! For wood, you can simply use raw linseed oil - this is period correct for many wooden rifle stocks, it's non-toxic(meaning you can apply this indoors with your hands if you so desire), and it's pretty much fool-proof in my experience.

Just make sure to use raw linseed oil. I'd suggest grabbing a bottle from Amazon, as it's cheaper than big-box stores and you're more likely to get what you want.

If you need to remove any rust-spots to keep the metal from corroding, buy a gallon of mineral oil and copper wool, and gently scrub the metal. Copper is soft, and will remove the active rust from metal before removing the present finish, and works surprisingly well. Don't use any power tools - hand power should be all you need.

If you want to move to the next step, you can use renaissance wax to protect both the metal and wood. I've not used it personally, but it's an option to consider.

As long as you're not trying to get said weapons back into fighting shape, getting them cleaned up and preserved isn't really that hard.

Oh, and for a Ares Predator, I'd honestly just use an H&K P30 with a compensator(the infamous 'Wick Stick', thanks to that movie) and call it a day. Trying to make an Auto 9 replica is admittedly a little complicated, from what I hear.

For raw oils, I like to go to food stores, they always sell pure oils. If you don't care about period correctness walnut oil is another drying oil and it seems easier to get right than flax/linseed oil.

This is better advice than I'd have had, thanks for covering that bit of it!

And on a geekier note, this is an Ares Predator from Shadowrun. If someone (me) wanted to have something customized to look like that, full form-over-function, what starting base would you recommend?

It would need some significant grip modification, but that's relatively simple. I'd say a long-slide "hardball" 1911 with a full length dust cover. Side benefit, they're mostly in heavier calibers like .45 ACP. And unlike most other handguns, there's a million companies that make customized 1911s.

Something like this:

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That's a lot of questions! I'll break this up a bit and start with the first ones.

There's lots of resources out there, I'll recommend HumbleMarksman's youtube channel, especially his early technique videos before he started getting free guns all the time (lucky bitch!). There's any number of books and programs, I've used five or six, but I think the best currently is Ben Stoeger's Practical Shooting Training. It has different sections with clear standards based on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go.

One big thing: Training pistol is 90% dry fire. For every minute you spend on the range burning expensive ammunition, you should be spending nine at home, with a carefully cleared and safe firearm, dry firing. It's free, it's easy, it's pretty boring, sometimes frustrating. It's also how you get gud.

As to the ethics of your LGS, I couldn't possibly say. Can you hold a group the size of your spread hand at ten yards? If so, you're doing well for a newb.

Do you have any hot takes on the ammo shortage? I compete in pistol and I've definitely noticed the empty shelves for common rounds. I've not had any trouble getting match rounds, or to say any more trouble; I've always had to order it and wait.

Relatedly, do you thing home-reloading is viable for hobbyists? The range I practice at has a productive reload business so I've never needed to look into it. Good reliability too based on some stories I've heard.

Relatedly, do you thing home-reloading is viable for hobbyists?

Depends on the caliber(s) and how much you shoot. For 9mm, it'll take many thousands of rounds before your return on investment goes positive for those, and that combined with the time it takes (usually about 2 hours to make 1000 rounds, or 3 if you have to trim and measure cases) can often mean it's cheaper to buy. This is also true for any cartridge made on ancient Soviet tooling, so 7.62x39/7.62x54R/5.45 tend not to be worth it, and 5.56/.308 also take significant amounts of ammunition produced to break even (this is especially true if you're in the US).

Once you step away from those cartridges, or the factory loads of those cartridges, the equipment generally pays for itself within the first couple thousand rounds (assuming you're using a progressive press). .38 Special/.357 Magnum is perhaps the best possible use case for a press, since if you're practicing you're necessarily shooting a lot of them, their bills of materials are functionally identical to 9mm... yet they cost twice as much per round for factory ammunition and they're usually under-loaded to boot. Less common rifle cartridges don't tend to be under-loaded, they just cost way more- there's no real difference between, say, 6.5 Creedmoor and 6.5 Japanese from a materials standpoint, but the latter costs 3 times more. And while that's not really something you should base kit choices around (choosing an Arisaka today as a hunting rifle just because you can make the ammunition the same price as modern stuff is not a good justification), it is valuable if you just like shooting old rifles relatively often. But then again, doing that is arguably more 'research/shits and giggles on a budget' than an actual measure of viability.

Also (for completeness' sake), if your head isn't on straight, you can quite easily make rounds that are actively dangerous to fire. 1900s-era pistol cartridges are the absolute worst for this; you can quite easily double or triple-charge the case because they really weren't designed with 2000s-era powder in mind if you don't pay sufficient attention when the press malfunctions. Rifle cartridges are way harder to do that with because you have to actively try to overload or use the wrong powder with them, but it can still be done. Quality control for reputable manufacturers is simply better than yours and they can sometimes be convinced to fix mistakes they make, but you're on the hook for gun, hand, and eye repairs as far as your reloads are concerned.

The ammo shortage has been sort of regional. It's bad in some places still, never was bad in others. In my state, we're all caught up on major calibers like 9mm and 5.56, but anything other than a few big ones is uneven supply. And there's nothing like the variety or cost of pre-covid ammo. Attendance is down at most competitions around here due to the scarcity and cost of ammo.

For reloading, yes if you're going for extreme precision, no otherwise. It's hard to beat a factory in cost per round for range trash ammo, but you can make match-grade stuff a lot cheaper than you can buy it. To make bulk reloading work, you need to go well beyond "hobbyist" and get some automated Dillon shit for several grand. Components for reloading have been harder hit than loaded ammunition, especially primers. Almost all competition shooters reload, but many of them can't due to primer shortage.

  • What's in your current collection?

  • What are you going to buy next?

  • What would you buy next if money/feasibility was no object?

  • What do you enjoy shooting the most?

  • What would you do with your firearms if the gov't suddenly instituted a mandatory buyback (inb4 boating accident)

  • What are some of your wacky opinions?

Pretty sparse, I don't collect guns. I shoot them until they die, then replace them. Two carry guns (one for suits, one for everything else), two competition pistols (old practice gun, new comp gun), three competition rifles (same, plus a PRS gun that doubles as a deer rifle), a couple .22s and a hunting shotgun.

Looking to swap the shotgun out for a nicer version once Beretta starts shipping proform guns again

A M240B, or more realistically, all the ammo I could get.

Suppressed .22 pistols are as much fun as you can have with your pants on.

Meh

Magnum cartridges are a conspiracy against morons. Here's your .375 H&H six pound mountain rifle, Skippy, have fun! Cool story, he just sold it back to us for a third what he paid for it. I'm gonna sell that gun six or seven times.

Someone suggested to me they believed switching from revolvers to pistols in the police force was a mistake, that having fewer, higher caliber bullets ready to shoot had a psychological effect on police officers that translated to fewer missed shots, fewer bystander fatalities, and more deliberate, accurate shooting on behalf of the officers.

I've never been able to find any concrete data on this, and I'm not sure if it's true or just something the person made up after watching Dirty Harry.

Not helpful in your case exactly; but I did see some study or other that found normal highway patrol and cops would often shoot until the gun went click; hence all the news stories of dudes getting shot 9 more times after the first 4 killed them.

I was under the impression that’s intended. It’s not trivial to assess whether a crumpled person is dead, wounded, or just panicking. Assuming lethal force is already started, I’m not sure holding back benefits the officer at all.

Whether or not this significantly threatens bystanders is a different question. My gut feeling is no, the scenario matters much more, and I’d guess police shootings are usually not too crowded. But I don’t actually have stats to back that up.

This may be a factor, but the biggest one is just adrenaline panic. People in life-or-death situations tend to use their tools as much as possible.

Plus, there's a "rattlesnake" aspect to this. A lot of gunfights are between people who don't seem to be trying to kill each other so much as scare each other by making lots of loud noises in their general direction. Panic-pulling the trigger is extremely common, even for cops. Often people have little recollection of how many times they fired.

Right. Not going to argue with that; just observing that institutions have little to no incentive to fight it (via training).

I'm skeptical training can much reduce it. We had "three to five round burst" for belt-feds drilled into us in training, but all that goes right out the window when the stress level ramps up. Most guys would rock out twenty-to-fifty round bursts.

Personal opinion, adrenaline panic is a psychological thing inherent to the person, and can't be moved much by training. It can be improved marginally, but not enough to warrant a lot of time and effort. It's better spent figuring out which people don't have it, and training them.

Isn't this what they are trained to do? Better to shoot too many times than not enough.

I have to wonder if going back to the older style of police pistols, where you have single-stack mags good for no more than 8-10 shots might improve things.

Depends on the goal. If it's more dead cops and fewer dead suspects, then it's a great idea.

I very much doubt it. There are exactly zero practical reasons to use a revolver over a semi-auto as a general duty weapon.

There may be a small effect because the two most common number of shots fired by cops is one or everything in the gun. As revolvers carry fewer rounds, they might shoot less, but that could have good and bad results. If your goal is to get cops to fire their guns less, then this would accomplish it. If the goal is bad guys down and good guys not, then it's a wash.

Revolvers are much more difficult to shoot well than semi-autos, mostly due to long, heavy triggers. There is also the issue of the cylinder gap, which affects both accuracy and power. There's just no upside to revolvers other than that they are cool.

There are exactly zero practical reasons to use a revolver over a semi-auto as a general duty weapon.

There's just no upside to revolvers . . .

Nitpick: pistols can't be fired out of battery, but revolvers can. Extremely rarely an issue for police, though, and there's no way it's worth the other tradeoffs. A backup revolved could be kept under the external vest if anyone really cared enough about this contingency.

I will nit your pick! A muzzle stand-off device will allow contact shots without pushing the slide out of battery, and are smaller, lighter and cheaper than a revolver.

There's just no upside to revolvers other than that they are cool.

There is one minor upside to revolvers: You can use them to fire cartridges that are too large to comfortably fit in a pistol grip magazine. This is a niche case, but is useful for handgun hunting in especially old-fashioned states.

This is true, but not super relevant to police duty guns.

That makes sense, thanks.


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