Lever-age

At the range last week I helped Michael Grasso dial in his .44 levergun with some .44 Special loads, just because having a gun in the house with an unsighted optic is anathema to all right-thinking people.

That mount for the Aimpoint Acro was pretty groovy. I hadn't gotten a good look at one before. I also dug the Magpul ELG furniture, although I'd expected to. I remember being skeptical of their shotgun stock before it came out and winding up having to eat crow, so...

Some people are skeptical, but I think a levergun has its uses, although it's possible to get carried away with one. 

I remember back at TacCon '19, Lee Weems made a pretty good case for why he used a .30-30 as a patrol rifle...

Reliability Check...

My friend Michael Grasso was able to obtain a loaner RMR HD from Trijicon to use on the Staccato C test pistol. There's some question as to whether the fact that the element slightly overhanging the rear edge of the ejection port would affect the reliable ejection of spent cases or not.

I was optimistic, since I've put thousands of rounds through several FN509's wearing a Trijicon SRO, which similarly overhangs the rear of the ejection port, without any problems.

We mounted the optic, got it dialed in, and proceeded to crank out two hundred rounds at a pace that left the slide hot enough to be painful to the touch. Not only were there no malfunctions of any type, the brass does not seem to contact the sight housing at all.

This morning I'll get back to the range and we'll try some different brands of ammunition with varying power factors.

Executive Poker

I've written about "gent's folders" before; smaller pocket knives that aren't all aggro and tacticool-looking.

Most of the ones I've played with so far were the short-bladed kind, which are not only non-threatening looking but also legal in the widest variety of places.

If you're not constrained by regulations regarding blade length or a locking blade on your folder, there's also the "stylus" type of gents folder, which I hadn't really played with before, so I decided to give the CEO model from Columbia Knife & Tool a whirl. (I sold some old ammo at this weekend's otherwise dismal Indy 1500 gun show and decided to share some of my small windfall with Brad, the knife guy.)

As the name would suggest, this style of knife is very slender, and will generally slip into any pen pocket large enough to accommodate a fine writing instrument, like that Monteverde Regatta.

You could carry it in your pants pocket, I guess, but I think its natural home would be a shirt or jacket pocket where pens are normally carried.

The blade is a bit over 3" long (3.11", to be technical) which can run afoul of local regs in places like Boston or Chicago. It's made of 8Cr13MoV steel, which is a lower-tier Chinese stainless that's roughly similar in properties to Japanese AUS-8... you're not getting exotic alloys at this price point. It's less rust resistant than good ol' 440C but easier to sharpen and less likely to chip in my experience.

There are complaints from reviewers at Amazon about the lack of a flipper on this variation (they make one with a flipper for a couple bucks more) but I prefer the slimmer profile of the flipperless one. This isn't a tactical knife.

The pivot is smooth and fitted with a ball bearing; a good shove on the thumb stud will often pivot it right into the locked position, although this is not an assisted opener. The pocket clip makes it sit nice and low and only someone who's paying a great deal of attention to your chestal region will notice it's not a pen. The lock is positive and the blade on my example was nice and sharp right out of the box. It's well up to normal everyday knifely chores.

Given its intended use, I give it a solid B grade. It's nothing exotic, but it's good-looking in a very clean and simple way, and the price is right.

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Dots Don't Go Everywhere...Yet

I'm on record as mentioning I'm not a huge fan of the 3" J-frame, and that steel J-frames in general don't have a ton of applicability in my world.

Small revolvers fall into one of two categories in my world. Either they're a pocket/ankle gun, or they're a belt gun. For me, a 3" J-frame is too long for a pocket, and a steel-framed one is too heavy for a pocket. I've pocket-carried a S&W 432 (and a 442 before it) for almost 25 years now, but a steel gun would make my winter coat hang funny.

"But you could carry a 3" J-frame in a belt holster!" you say. Well, sure. But I could also carry a Detective Special, a Taurus 856/327, or a 3" Smith & Wesson K-frame in a belt holster with no more real difficulty and get a 20% ammunition capacity boost. In fact I have been carrying an 856 TORO for a year now.

This is what makes the new R.O.C. J-frame red dot mount from Shield Arms a real head-scratcher for me. It mounts to a Smith J-frame using the sideplate screws, but all the photos show it on a Model 442. That effectively makes the gun too big for a pocket and anyone who's actually carried an ankle gun should get a good belly laugh out of the idea of sticking an MRDS in the most dirt-and-lint collecting spot where it's possible to tote a blaster. (Even IWB, the 507k on my TORO needs blowing clean every few days.)

I guess you could use it to mount a dot on a belt-carried 3" 640 or something, but all the J-frame revolvers in Smith & Wesson's current catalog lineup that could really benefit from a small red dot... think the 3" Model 60, Model 63, or Model 317 ...all have adjustable rear sights, which means that they're already compatible with an Allchin-type scope mount.

I mean, I get that red dots are awesome, but we're a ways off from a functional MRDS solution for pocket guns.

(H/T to Gorillafritz.)

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Tab Clearing...

• The easiest way to be a rich and famous author is to be a rich and famous person who gets offered a book deal.


• "Fully Self Driving" has been a scam. Perhaps in the legal sense, even.


• Stop pointing guns at people you shouldn't be pointing guns at.

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Negligent Discharge

So one of the NYPD cops, an ESU* officer at that, cranked off a round in the Columbia building that was temporarily occupied by student protestors. He was using the weapon-mounted light to find a way to navigate barriers in the dark. Fortunately the bullet didn't hit anyone.

There was absolutely no reason to have an unholstered firearm in the middle of that Punch & Judy Show. That was a job for a handheld light, not the SureFire U-Boat screwed to your Glock. 

People act like just having a light on a pistol turns it into some sort of dual-purpose tool and next thing you know they're using it to direct traffic or look for stuff they dropped under their squad car in the dark. I swear to gawd, it's only a matter of time before we hear about some Officer Fife using it to check for horizontal gaze nystagmus.

*NYPD Emergency Services Unit contains their equivalent of SWAT, but not all ESU officers are SWAT dudes.

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My mind has been changed... mostly.

At the TacCon presenter's dinner this year, Andy Stanford passed out SureFire Stilettos to attendees as door prizes.

When the Stiletto was introduced, it was very much the flavor of the month and all the cool kids used them for a bit before moving on to whatever the next awesome light was. I am very much an uncool kid and I stuck with my trusty EDCL2-T, which I'd been using since they were introduced back in '17.

I stuck with that 2-cell light until a few months back when I downsized to its single-cell EDCL1-T cousin as part of a general pocket clutter shrinkage project: Sabre Red Mk.6 to a POM dispenser, Spyderco Delica to a Spyderco Dragonfly, et cetera. Since doing so, I haven't found myself feeling limited by the single cell light's 500-lumen output. It's still plenty if your job doesn't include nighttime traffic stops and clearing structures.

The Stiletto is roughly the same size as the single-cell EDCL, but nice and flat and more comfortable in the pocket.

When I popped the packaging open I immediately felt stupid. See, the reason I didn't jump on it like everyone else back then is... um... I didn't realize it had a "tail cap" button that served as a momentary switch for the full 650 lumens.

For some reason I had thought the only buttons were the ones on the side (one a light control and the other used for programming the sequence of toggling between 650, 250, and 5 lumen settings) like the setup on the Guardian or Sidekick. 

That side button is fine for normie flashlight use but sucks for "tactical" applications. Further, you don't want to have to toggle through brightness settings to get to the full output in a "tactical" light, but having it immediately pop on with 650 lumens and then toggle down to 5 reduces its utility as a normal task light. That was the genius of the EDCL series, where a light press of the tailcap got you a task light, but a full press summoned up the face-melting output.

So I've been carrying and using the Stiletto for something over a week at this point and here's my rundown:

PROS:

• It really is comfortable in a pocket. It's slim and light and my fears of it turning on in a pocket seem to have been overblown.
• The dual button configuration makes it handy for both normal and "tactical" use. You can program the side button so the bright light comes on first, but why would you? Use the tailcap button for that.
• It doesn't look "tactical". Some security people have started getting squirrely about knurled metal "tactical" flashlights, even ones without scary fanged bezels. You're less likely to be told you need to leave it in the car than the EDCL1-T.
• You don't generate a steady stream of dead CR123 lithium batteries that need to be disposed of.

CONS:

• Supposedly it's plenty tough and rugged and waterproof, but I just don't get the same reassuring vibe from plastic, no matter how "high-impact" it is, that I do from knurled metal.
• When the internal batteries go flat, you have to plug it in to recharge it and that takes time. You can't just toss a fresh cell in there and be up and running immediately. Also, SureFire... Micro-USB? Really? The rest of the world is basically standardizing on USB-C. Why not step boldly into The Current Year?

On balance, though, the Stiletto is an improvement over the EDCL1-T, I think, so I reckon I'll stick with it for a while, unless some flaw I haven't noticed pops up.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #253...

Hotel room nightstand shot from TacCon: Taurus 856 T.O.R.O. with a Holosun 507k in a PHLster City Special, six rounds of Hornady Critical Defense 110gr +P in an eight round Tuff Strip, my trusty POM spicy treats dispenser, 500 lumen Surefire EDCL1-T, and a waved Spyderco Dragonfly.

Click the links to steal this look!

(Do I think the Hornady 110gr +P Critical Defense is the bestest load for the .38? Probably not, but it's easy to get the dot sighted in with, and reloads are speedy with those pointy bullets. Its performance is certainly adequate, especially if you're not particularly worried about needing to defeat vehicular barriers.)

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Incremental Improvements

I'm currently working with a Rost Martin RM1C for an upcoming review in Shooting Illustrated.

It arrived with an RMR-compatible optics plate, and the Swampfox Justice I had on hand bolted right up.

I like the fact that all RM1C's are optics-ready, rather than the annoying tendency, all too common among manufacturers, of releasing a non-optics model first and then...one or two SHOT Shows later...releasing an optics cut model like it's some big event.

Normally, here in 2024 I'd gripe about the fact that the optics cut wasn't deep enough to allow the normal height irons to co-witness, and the fact that the slide required adaptor plates rather than being cut to allow direct mounting using the RMSC or 507k footprint. Rost Martin gets a bye from me on this one, however, because it's not an entirely new design, but rather an Americanized version of the AREX Delta Gen.2 from Slovenia.

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Shotgun Rocks

I thought this photo was interesting.

Rifled Foster-type slugs from a semiauto 12ga with some sort of inexpensive folding backup irons, either Magpuls or a knockoff, mounted atop it. Notice the smoke from the muzzle brake and the not-yet-ejected spent shell still traveling rearward visible in the ejection port.

Between the brake, the gas operation, and the inline nature of the stock, the recoil is driving the gun straight to the rear with virtually zero muzzle climb. However, the inertia is also causing the rear folding BUIS to flop rearwards.

Gray Man Fail

"There’s a saying that “all costumes fall apart at the shoes,” and it’s largely true. Next Halloween or costume party, give it a try for yourself: cowboys with Converse and pilgrims with Pumas. Footwear, sunglasses, watches, and other daily wear rarely changes on a whim. Fit can be very personal, and people tend to stick to what they like.

And even if you don’t know much about shoes, many out there do. Salespeople, in particular, are more class-conscious, using watches and shoes to determine if someone is a “good fit” (more or less likely to purchase a product). There are endless Facebook groups and forums that obsess over every aspect of personal items, taking the time to identify and psychoanalyze the choices of others in some form of fashion phrenology."

Those 5.11 ATACs match a Hawaiian shirt about as well as white sidewalls and Oakleys go with tie-dye, Joe Friday.

"Nobody knows I'm armed!"
Photo by Oleg Volk

Pew, Improved

The ability to swap mags from subsonics to supers and have, essentially, an MP5SD in the sheets and a Krink in the streets is a big improvement in utility.

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Unsolicited Firearms Industry Opinion

ATTENTION:

If you’re launching a brand new pistol at SHOT ’24 and it uses adaptor plates to attach slide-mounted optics, you are three years behind the curve. 

Adaptor plates are a retrofit kludge for existing designs. New pistols need to direct-mount the most size-appropriate footprints (RMR and 507k on full size double-stacks, 507k on compact/single stack.)

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FN’s Reflex knows what time it is. That optic is attached directly to the slide.

A Jog Around the Blogs...

• Gorillafritz has thoughts on flashlight usage. (Departments issuing weapon-mounted lights without adequately training officers in how to use them are a blight upon the land. I've heard horror stories of officers directing traffic with their WML. It's only a matter of time before I hear about one using their TLR-1 to check for horizontal gaze nystagmus.)


• Bobbi finds ominous rumblings on the international scene.


• Pragmatic pondering on the problems of pocket poppers.

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I have been kilt onna streets yet again.

 

A couple of common taters objected to my post about speed strips, because there are several speedloaders which are much faster.

I replied:

"In general, with a revolver carried for personal defense (as with any handgun carried for personal defense) you're going to solve the problem with the ammunition in the weapon or you aren't going to solve the problem.

Reloads, whether for a Glock 34 or a J-frame, are mostly woobies, as well as a way to save you the embarrassment of having to hand a half-empty gun to responding officers.

If you're playing some game where you're reloading revolvers on the clock, a speedloader is definitely the way to go. But the fastest ones, like the SL, are useless for CCW because of the ease with which they will disgorge their contents. The only speedloader that holds its rounds sturdily enough that I'd recommend it for carry is the old HKS, which is only marginally faster than strips.

Plus speedloaders are bulky AF to carry, and most people won't bother.

But you do you."

(True Story: I had an HKS CA-44 loaded with five .44 Spl 200gr Silvertips rolling around loose in the bottom of a purse for close to a decade without dropping a round.)

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The Shape of Things to Come

Enclosed optics, direct mounted via standard footprints, in such a way that they don't require ridiculously high sights are the wave of the future in the slide-mounted MRDS field.

No adaptor plates or suppressor-height sights are required on this FN Reflex micro-nine with an enclosed Holosun EPS Carry and a Streamlight TLR-7 Sub.

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A Hotter Way to Strip

I can't remember where I first read about carrying just four rounds in a speed strip. I was thinking it was something Massad Ayoob wrote, since that's the first place I first heard about a lot of stuff, especially back in the day, but Mas is a fan of five rounds in a six round strip. 

I think the four-round strip idea originated with Michael De Bethencourt, but I probably learned about it secondhand from Chuck Haggard, Gorillafritz, or Claude Werner. The theory behind it is that it's a lot faster to get rounds into the chambers two at a time, and it's sometimes better to get the gun up and shooting quickly than it is to fumble that fifth round into the cylinder.

Anyhow, for quite a while, I always saw that as a sort of secret sign. If I saw a picture of someone's carry revolver and they had a speed strip with two pairs of rounds separated by a gap in the middle, I'd think "There's a dude who knows what time it is."

The first time I saw Caleb Giddings post a pic of a strip loaded with two rounds and a space, and two more rounds and a space, and then two more rounds, I was gobsmacked. What kind of voodoo, cool guy, go-fast esoterica was this? What revolver accessory manufacturing company was so switched on that they were offering such a clever  gadget, which would let you load quickly in pairs anything from just two rounds to a whole cylinder full, (assuming you had the time.)

I PM'ed Caleb.

He wrote back "They're just eight-round Tuff Strips. Duh."

D'OH!

They come in 8-shot .32 size, as well!

Incidentally, you'll note that the reloads in these things are Hornady Critical Defense. I'm not a huge fan of Critical Defense, especially in .32 Mag, since it's light-for-caliber and will underpenetrate if it does expand (never a given out of a snubbie).

But that conical bullet shape makes it a breeze to reload in a revolver. You can practically chuck those things into the charge holes from across the room.

Packing the Dot

One of the things I wrote about regarding the optics-ready Taurus 856 TORO when it came out was that the idea of a small-to-medium CCW revolver with a miniature red dot sight was so novel that nobody had really figured out how to holster it yet.

The first holster I tried was a prototype from Dark Star Gear, who basically took their classic Apollo compact revolver holster and cut away a slit to clear the optic. I've used the regular Apollo plenty in the past and it's a great holster for small wheelguns.

Problems arose from the optic-ready prototype, though. It worked fine for carry in the appendix position, well forward of the hip (and the flatter your tummy, the better it worked) but if you tried to carry anywhere over on the strong side, your belt would apply torque directly to the optic. Further, once you drew the revolver, you belt would collapse the area where the optic sat and make reholstering a tricky proposition.

The solution, as my friends at PHLster discovered, was to add a little garage for the optic...

I've been carrying this setup strong side at 3 o'clock for several weeks now. It's comfortable, your belt doesn't foul the optic, and reholstering is a breeze since if basically acts like a funnel for the muzzle.

For the best in comfort and concealment, it's even available assembled on an Enigma Express rig from PHLster, ready to put on and go.

I need to get this setup into a class and really put it through the wringer, but after almost a month of carry and a fair bit of dry practice, I haven't had an issue with it yet.

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Let There Be Light

I'd dissed the Streamlight Microstream in the past. Lots of friends liked them for their small size and readily-available AAA batteries, but I didn't think that their 28-lumen output was worth putting another pocket wart in my mom jeans.

I'm fine with the EDCL1-T, but even a single-cell CR123 light is kind of a chonk for some folks. It's less noticeable in a pocket than the bigger two-cell lights, but you still know it's there.

500 lumen EDCL1-T vs. original gangsta 28 lumen Microstream

Apparently the latest iteration of the Microstream is just as small as the old one, still powered by the single AAA cell, and now outputs 45 lumens, which may not be a "tactical" output but is more than bright enough for almost any normie flashlight chore. Plus the new pocket clip has a double curve to it so you can also slip it on a hat brim for a task light. And like the good stuff from Surefire and Streamlight, it has the solid, waterproof construction that so many... other ...flashlight companies haven't quite mastered.

Best of all, BezosMart is running an early Black Friday sale, sixty percent off. For $12.54, these things would make hella good stocking stuffers.

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The next phase.

We've reached the next landmark of autumn: Switching out my summer-weight gun burkhas for my winter-weight ones.

Alas, Royal Robbins has since discontinued the Expedition Light shirts, and none of the equivalents I've yet found have the document pocket on both breasts, which is kind of something I really prefer. Still looking for the right replacement.

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