Now it can be told...

The reason I was in Nebraska last month was for a product launch event for a new Leupold optic, the LCO Pro F2. The format of the event was a 1½ day class, followed a mini carbine match, during which I had the opportunity to put several hundred rounds downrange using the new dot.

Hornady hosted the event at the excellent Heartland Public Shooting Park just outside Grand Island.

Kyle Lamb instructed us media types in the use of the carbine...

...aided by Doug Koenig.

I'll expand further in print elsewhere, but in short, Leupold is gearing up to go hard into the high-end duty grade electro optics biz again, since they're one of a small handful of companies who can credibly play in that end of the pool.

Chris Cerino lighting up a target.

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The Gun Hipster

There is a certain flavor of gun nerd who likes guns because they are different. I know, because I was one and have to fight down the urge to relapse constantly.

These people think ARs and AKs, Glocks and 1911s, and 870s and 500s are boring guns for normies. Why would you have a GP100 or 686 when you could have a Rhino or Mateba? 

It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with it. It's okay to own guns for fun or because you think they're cool! But if I'm giving recommendations to people for guns* that are intended to be used extensively, whether in competition, training, or carrying for defense (which is, after all, a "use" even if you never have to draw it in anger), my advice is generally going to lean toward the pragmatic.

The recent announcement of the discontinuation of the SCAR by FN USA is a thing that brought this to mind again. They'll have spares to support the gun for a while, but it's a finite supply and a single-source one at that.

They're still making ARs.

*Which, you know, is part of my job.

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Celebrities are supposed to be role models, right?

Sean "Diddy" Combs knows the score: A dry carbine is a malfunction-prone carbine...

There are two kinds of people: Those who were horrified by this article, and those who were horrified by this article but wish with every fiber of their being that they could have sent this screen shot to Uncle Pat.

(Note for the humorless: By all accounts this guy is a real dirtbag, one of those sorts of dude who uses clout and success as tools to victimize women for his personal jollies, and they're apparently still writing books to throw at him... but any gun nerd chuckled at the plain text of that headline.)

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The Legend That Won't Die

Over at Commander Zero's place, I ran across this blurb:

Functionally, both should, in theory, have an advantage over the AR-15 in terms of reliability due to the gas systems of the 180 and JAKL not venting gases into the receiver. Although, to be fair, if you fire enough .223 in one session to gum up your AR you probably have a much bigger problem on your hand. But, on the other hand, a system that can be indifferent to the occasional benign neglect is always nice. You don’t always have time to detail clean your gun at the end of the day.

My reaction was something like this:

Wtf Time GIFfrom Wtf GIFs

So, when I took that carbine class from Pat Rogers, he had me using "Filthy 14", rather than my own blaster. I know it had been cleaned once back around the 26,000-round mark, but I'm not sure it had been cleaned since, although some grime was probably knocked off as parts were replaced on schedule. 

It was certainly dirty enough to spew a fine mist of carbon mixed with Slip 2000 with every shot. Seriously, the gun was so filthy that I got freckled on my hands and cheeks with garbage blowing out of the receiver. Keep it lubed and it will run.

I don't know that my current school carbine has ever been what you'd call "cleaned", outside of having a bore snake pulled through it a few times. It stays well-lubed and that's about it, now that all it gets used for is classes. (If I were still using it, rather than a gauge, as a house gun, I'd keep it cleaned on general principles.) 

No matter how many times this pre-GWOT myth gets debunked, it somehow lingers in the collective consciousness of a segment of the gun-owning community.

(IMO, the main reason to prefer a piston gun to a DI one is if you're running a suppressor. The increased back pressure can spew a lot of nastiness into the shooter's face with a direct impingement gun.)

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QotD: AR15 Edition

The general conservative press...and its associated blogosphere...has rarely impressed me with the quality of its firearms-related content from a technical standpoint. Generally the difference between a conservative outlet and a liberal one is that while the writers for both places are largely ignorant of firearms, at least from my point of view, the conservative one at least likes them okay.

So to find Kevin D. Williamson dropping big ol' Martin Fackler quotes in his latest rebuttal to the WaPo's piece on AR-pattern rifles was a breath of fresh air.

It's a pretty decent read.

If the editors of the Washington Post really believe that speed is what makes a bullet lethal then, by all means, I invite them to take one of those high-velocity squirrel guns mentioned above—or a 5.56mm AR-style rifle, for that matter—up to Alaska to hunt some coastal grizzlies. I’d recommend doing some thorough estate planning beforehand.

All the Post has actually established is that a modestly powerful rifle is typically more powerful than a modestly powerful handgun—authoritatively disposing of a matter that has never been, as far as I can tell, in dispute.

Hey, look!

From the latest ish of RECOIL:

The company itself started with a simple idea. Back in the day, U.S. servicemembers came up with all kinds of field-expedient solutions to make it simpler to fish reloads out of clumsy USGI magazine pouches — everything from elaborate arrangements of parachute cord and 100-mph tape to simple knotted loops of 550 cord (unfortunately) clogging the drain hole in the magazine floor plate.

Richard Fitzpatrick, a former Recon Marine, came up with an idea to make a simple rubber loop that could be slipped onto the magazines that would serve the same purpose without using kludgy tape or clogging the drain hole — and thus Magpul was born. (MAGazine PULl … get it?)

Performative Gun-Fondling is Pandering

She looks as natural with that carbine as Barack did with that Perazzi.

My culture is not your costume, lady.

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Carbon Dating

The mathematical formula for guessing the year of a carbine class:
((MLOK - Keymod)/piston guns * average VFG length) + ( Picatinny rails + EOTechs)/ Vltor stocks. pic.twitter.com/wZFwi4jlbq

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) September 27, 2021

The picture in the tweet is that Louis Awerbuck carbine/pistol class from 2009. A few LEO's, but mostly just regular gun school junkies.

Friends of Pat in Alliance, late 2016. Fairly high percentage of LE/mil for an open enrollment gun class, maybe a third or more of the attendees?

Media class at Alliance Police Training in late 2018, with the usual mix of media types: Career cops moonlighting writing gun articles, gun school junkies, and regular I Like to Shoot enthusiast writers/YouTubers/influencers.

Forward Looking

In discussion about the post on low-power variable optics the other day, a friend reminded me that by '08, when that Magpul Dynamics video came out, the tippy-tip of the spear guys were all already really into the S&B Short Dot. I looked in my copy of Green Eyes, Black Rifles (which is one of the handful of firearms books I keep handy at my desk) and, holy cow, it was copyrighted back in 2008. It sure doesn't feel that long ago... Anyway, in that book Kyle Lamb discusses LPVOs at some length, covering the Short Dot, Trijicon AccuPoint, and Leupold CQ/T.

For a hot minute back around 2006 I had played with the Leupold CQ/T, but its size and lack of variety in mounting options had me go back to zero-magnification Aimpoints for a number of years.

CQ/T + Vltor CASV-EL = chinweld. Derpeste.

I don't know for sure which other scope Larry Vickers is talking about in this piece about the history of the Short Dot, but I'd bet it rhymes with "Bloopold Z Pew B".

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Magnifying Glass

Let's get the triggering part out of the way first...

Okay, on to the topic at hand: This possible time traveler sighting...

This dude was pretty forward thinking. 

This would have been filmed in early '08, maybe even late '07, and homie's got a low-power variable optic on his carbine. We were barely out of Peak EOTech in '08. Full-size Aimpoints were the go-to carbine topper, sometimes with a flip-up magnifier. The Aimpoint Micro had barely been out a year.

In retrospect, the only thing that keeps me from thinking this guy in the Magpul Dynamics video was some kind of John Titor time traveler from 2019 or so is the fact that he was running a 1911. 

Five or six years later, running an LPVO on a general purpose carbine was still pretty leading edge. But these days it seems like a lot of clueful people do.

I'm just some writer, but I can take a hint.

(I've decided to leave the old Leupold on this gun and save the Viper for the carbine I build to replace the old BCM middie with the full-length rail farm and gov't profile barrel.)

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This Current Decade...

How it started:

   

How it's going:

 

"Safe directions", muzzle aversion, WMLs, and you...

Movies and television are great places to learn how not to handle your guns.

In this modern era when tactical teams carry handguns and long guns with weapon-mounted lights and/or lasers, the temptation for directors to show TV operators swarming through buildings with their weapons up in their sightline and the darkness being split by searching beams of light must be irresistible. It really does look dramatic.

Not a Hollywood studio.

No doubt the technical advisors on the sidelines are chewing their tongues half off while the director overrides their suggestions. The director has the gun and the actor's face in frame and the bright white light beam searches briefly right across the camera's lens...

Here's where someone reflexively blurts NRA Safety Rule #1 "ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction." The NRA calls it the primary rule of gun safety, and I've heard good instructors refer to it (or its close relative, Cooper's Rule #2) as the Golden Rule of safe gun handling.

When moving around an occupied structure with a gun in your hand, though, it can be hard to keep the gun pointed in a truly safe direction, unless you're moving around with the gun in one hand and a five gallon drywall mud bucket full of play sand in the other. In this case, you could phrase it "Always keep the gun pointed in the safest available direction."

You'll encounter passionate advocates of various muzzle-aversion ready positions and carry positions touting them as the one true path. 

Speaking as a photographer, "up" would not be the safest possible direction for these dudes.

"Low-ready is best because thus-and-such" or "A muzzle-up high-carry is superior for movement because this other thing", but a well-trained shooter should have access to a full repertoire of high-and low-ready and -carry positions and be able to transition fluidly between them as the immediate situation dictates. After all, the safest possible direction is different on a rubber raft than it is on the ground floor directly beneath your children's second-floor bedrooms.

One objection to weapon-mounted lights has been that muzzling unknowns in order to decide if they are a threat or not is a bad idea, and that's generally true. For a long time, a lot of people taught that the Best Practice with a WML on a handgun (and some folks even advocated it for long guns) was searching with a separate handheld and only bringing the WML into play once a threat had been identified.

This made a lot more sense in the 62-lumen incandescent days. Nowadays, when even a compact light like the Streamlight TLR-7 is putting out 500 lumens and full-size 2-cell lights on service pistols with a thousand or more are common, there's no need to go running around with the pistol at eyeball level just to illuminate a room. There's plenty of bounce and spill from the light when the gun is held in a low ready pointed at the baseboards or a high-carry, pointed at the ceiling, to illuminate a residential room or hallway and identify who and what is in it.

Besides, whether with a handgun or long gun, moving about with the weapon up in a firing position and viewing your surroundings through the sights is rapidly fatiguing and leads to tunnel vision. Save that stuff for the movies. 

My 2021 project: Using the 509 Compact MRD with Trijicon SRO and Streamlight TLR-7 as my regular carry gun and for all classes and matches, using a Spark holster graciously provided by Henry Holsters.

Fun Gun Nerdery

 There's a fun post on rifle chamberings and modularity over at Counter Jockey Chronicles.

"The AR platform is pretty damn effective. And thanks to its modularity it can be tailored to any situation that arises. 

 But unfortunately, the DOD seems to think the pistol is where Joe and Jane should have modularity. And that's the dumbest damn thing done in the name of jointness since Robert Strange tried to make the F-111 a carrier based interceptor."

Weird Nostalgia

Putting together that piece for Ammoman has left me with a weird nostalgia for a Surefire M900, the old-school weapon-mounted light built into a vertical foregrip.

Thing is, I don't really have any guns to put it on. It'd just be for a range toy, anyway. Full-size VFGs tend to get in the way, and the only carbine I have that still has an old-school full length rail farm on it already has a perfectly useable modern Surefire Scout.

I've got most of the parts to assemble the gun lying around except for the rail system and a bare upper, but I'd just wind up building some sort of retro carbine, playing with it some, and selling it in this panic or the next.

I'm still browsing eBay, though...
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Hey, look!

"The AR-15 (and its many variants) wasn’t always America’s most popular rifle, but it has been for the last twenty years or so. The AR-pattern carbines on the ranges of 2020 look completely different from the most popular models on gun store racks at the turn of the millennium. My friend David has quipped that he can guess the year an AR was built by looking at it. In my experience he’s rarely far off. Driven by changes in technology, the evolution of TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures), and simple fashions in the marketplace, the typical appearance and accessories have changed dramatically since the days when customers were snatching them off the shelves as last minute preparation for Y2K."

Surefire M300 Scout puts out better than double the lumens of the ultra-high-output xenon head on the old Millennium handguards, on only a third of the batteries.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #185...

Outtake from yesterday's photo session for an upcoming piece. I'll link it when it goes live...
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A Different Flavor of Panic

The firearms industry is currently in the throes of a second wave of panic buying. The first was kicked off by the early days of the 'Rona, when people decided that an extra AR15 and a case or three of ammo was necessary to defend their stash of hand sanitizer and toilet paper.

The second wave was kicked off during the protests and riots following the killing of George Floyd. It still seems to be going strong and at this point it's highly unlikely that supplies will return to anything like normal before it's time for the Great American Quadrennial Election Year Gun-Buying Freakout.

This current panic has a different flavor to it than most, though. Available evidence shows that there are a large number of first-time buyers looking for something to defend home and hearth, rather than existing gun hobbyists adding a twelfth or thirteenth AR15 to an existing collection.

Exhibit A would be that, while budget AR15's have disappeared from dealer shelves, there's no real shortage of lowers, lower receiver parts kits, or completed uppers at most of the vendors I've checked. You may not be able to buy a Ruger AR-556 or Smith M&P15 at your local gun store right now, but you can go to Palmetto State Armory or CDNN and buy the parts to build all the ARs you want.

That was not the case during the '08 or '13 panics, where stripped lowers were rationed and you couldn't find a LRPK or BCG for love nor money.

What this tells me is that the current wave of buyers is not largely made up of hobbyists fearing bans, but non-gun-owners wanting to buy a firearm for home defense. Those people don't know about buying a Poverty Pony lower from CDNN and a blem upper from PSA and rolling their own; they just know about going to the gun store and buying a gun.

The other signal is that the quintessential American Normie Home Defense Long Gun, the 12 gauge pump action, is selling like hotcakes and sometimes at crazy prices...

If you're looking at those prices and thinking "Hey, I've got that old Fuddblaster 28" Wingmaster I bought when I thought I might take up bird hunting. I should put a shorter barrel on that thing and Gunbroker it!" then I've got bad news for you, because it looks like you weren't the only person with that idea...

This reminds me that I need to change the batteries in the light on my own 870...
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First World Problems

When I last attended a class in Alliance, I brought my "work" carbine along and was mortified to discover it started doubling midway through day one. I set the gun aside and one of the other students was kind enough to lend me his spare stick to finish out the class.

All blinged out and nowhere to go...

Fortunately, Dave Laubert was nearby and actually performed a house call at the range to check on the ailing blaster. Unfortunately the problem was that it just had enough miles on the lockwork that the hammer/sear engagement was getting spotty. Understandable, because it was a very early Nineties Colt Sporter lower with the original guts still in it. Also unfortunately, because it was a very early Nineties Colt, it's a large-pin lower with a pinned sear block, so getting replacement parts wasn't going to be as simple as running by my local gun store...

Since I had my own backup carbine at home, all sighted in and ready to go, I just pressed it back into service as the housegun and filed the now trigger-group-less Colt away as a "when I get around to it" project.

A giant rail farm, straight outta 2007, with an AFG and MTAC

Some time late last year I was in Indy Arms Co and mentioned my woes to Mark, the manager, and he was like "Hey, I've got an Armalite large pin trigger group right here on the shelf I'll make you a deal on." So I bought it and it rode around in the trunk of my car for a bit until, right before SHOT, I dropped off the carbine and trigger group at the shop. (I've built enough AR lowers to know that if someone else wants to do it, I'll let them.)

It was late February before I got around to picking up the gun and now I haven't had a chance to confirm its reliability myself. It passes all function checks and I'm pretty sure it got test-fired, but still...

So the backup housegun is still the one with the loaded mag in the well.

What's making me itch is that I had intended to replace the Leupold 1.25-4X that's on it with the 1-6X Vortex Viper PST II I won at TacCon last year, and now I have no easy way to sight it in...so I guess that's going to hold off for a bit. At least that way it's still dialed in if some weird scenario requires its use.
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And So It Goes

Twenty years ago on internet gun forums, before 9/11 and the GWOT, before Bravo Company and Daniel Defense and Noveske, before everybody and their brother made an entry-level AR for six bills or less...well, most of us knew nothing about AR-15s.

You think it's derpy out there now with "jUsT aS gOoD aS" and "wOrKs fOr mE"? Well, it was like that pretty much everywhere in the Before Times. Even the smart people who knew a lot about the AR family of weapons didn't know as much back then as they do now because, frankly, we've learned a lot over nearly two decades of endless war.

Anyway, back then when J. Random Newb showed up on a gun forum asking about AR-15s, the advice he'd be given, in between AK shooters saying dumb stuff about "poops where it eats" and he-man M1A fans crowing about "poodleshooters", would be to "stick to the ABC's". In this case "ABC" meant Armalite, Bushmaster, and Colt. Sometimes a "D" was added for DPMS.

The middle one was mine, early '03. Derpeste. ("Derpeste" is like "namaste". It means "The derp in me recognizes and acknowledges the derp in you.")

I guess Armalite's still in business, or at least their website is up this morning, but I haven't really checked in a few years. Colt is still thrashing around, stubbornly refusing to let the bubbles stop. Bushmaster and DPMS got swallowed by Cerbe...Freedom Gro...Remington Outdoors and were quietly shuttered recently, and I'm not surprised. I literally can't remember the last time someone I personally know bought a "Bushhamster" or a "DerPMS", as they're sometimes derisively referred to by AR snobs.

They suffered from being priced almost as high as an actual Colt while having a rep for occasionally indifferent QC that made the extra cost over an entry-level Smith or Ruger hard to justify. That, and half everybody builds rather than buying whole these days. If I'm going to shell out for a complete gun, it's going to be the aforementioned Colt, or a Bravo Company or DD. ("But Tam!" says the informed consumer, "The AR business is so incestuous that most of those manufacturers are drawing parts from the same pool!" This is true, but the BC or DD rifle will be properly assembled and checked. If I wanted to roll the dice on needing to finish the assembly at home, I'd buy PSA and be happy. I've done it before.)

Although there's one side effect of Remington closing down some of their tacticool labels that I hadn't anticipated. Tapco is one of the brands that made the go-aways, and apparently they are...or, were, I guess...one of the only sources of reliable aftermarket Mini-14 magazines. Not doing a lot of A-Team cosplay, I was unaware of this fact. But if it means never having to see an SKS in a janky pinned "folding" stock or hear Cletus talk about how he made his WASR into a "Dragon-off", it's a small price to pay.


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Ten Years Ago at VFTP...

From December 2009...

"So the cover of this month's American Rifleman announces "The Unexpected SIG516". 

A new AR clone these days is about as "unexpected" as another Friday the 13th sequel or Law & Order spinoff. What's "unexpected" is that there are still some gun manufacturers who haven't jumped on this bandwagon, since all that's needed to get in the game is an ATF variance letter sent to Continental Machine Tool or Sabre Defense. In a world where such unlikely candidates as Ruger, Remington, and Smith & Wesson are pimping AR-style carbines, what's left? 

Here are my predictions for "unexpected" AR announcements at SHOT: 

1. Harrington & Richardson H&R-15: Cast parts and stained birch furniture keep costs down. Sold at Wal-Mart for $109.95.
2. Marlin MAR-15: Neither direct impingement nor piston operated, the MAR-15 is California-legal, since the bolt is cycled via a complex linkage actuated by rocking the pistol grip forward and back.
3. Thompson/Center EncoR-15: Available in almost two hundred chamberings, three quarters of which are designed by J.D. Jones and only of interest to handloaders who also hunt rabid grizzly bears.
4. General Motors GI-15: Unsold inventory stocks will allow these to be sold at zero percent financing with a hefty manufacturer's rebate less than six months after their introduction. Brace for recalls.
5. Apple iR-15: Only works with proprietary ammunition. Made of sleek, white plastic. Has to be sent to an authorized service center for field-stripping and cleaning. Owners soon sport glazed, zombielike expressions of loyalty familiar to posters at MacForums or GlockTalk.
6. Harley-Davidson HD-15: Leaks oil. Comes with clip-on ponytail and lick'n'stick eagle tattoo in box, as well as coupon for chromed BUIS, charging handle, and highway pegs."