Breakup.

It's not you, Lasergrip and Lightguard, it's me.

I carried my M&P9 from the middle of 2011 until earlier this year. For almost that entire time, it sported both the Lasergrip and the Lightguard from Crimson Trace. I thought both were handier than a pocket on a shirt.

I was obviously in a minority on the Lightguard. I found myself caught between two schools of thought: On one hand was the ALL THE LUMENS camp, who correctly pointed out that the Lightguard's modest 100-lumen output was barely SOME of the lumens and not even close to MOST of them. It didn't generate near enough light for "bounce" to illuminate a room. On the other hand was the camp who pointed out that most people don't go hunting for bad guys with a CCW pistol and therefore a weaponlight is unnecessary bulk and expense.

Nobody, however, could point out the downside to having something at which I'd already decided to shoot be a little better illuminated, and the Lightguard was reasonably priced and didn't make the pistol any longer or wider or harder to conceal.

Unfortunately, when I switched to the Glock earlier this year, I discovered that the shape of the Glock Lightguard was not as friendly, especially during extended shooting sessions. By the end of the first day of the Contextual Handgun: Armed Parent/Guardian class in Topeka back in April, I had the worst case of "Glock Knuckle" I've ever had. I'm not normally susceptible to the malady, but with the addition of the Lightguard, the second knuckle on my shooting hand was slathered in Liquid Skin and wrapped in Bandaids by the end of the class.

What made it annoying is that I've taken that M&P, complete with Lightguard, to multiple classes and it never caused any problems.

The modest benefits accrued by the Lightguard aren't worth that. After five months, it looks like my Lightguard is coming off the Glock.

Similarly, the Lasergrip. On the M&P, it's a no-brainer. It simply replaces the pistol's factory backstrap, unobtrusively adding a laser for no increase in bulk at all. It's such a no-brainer that I'll admit being a little judgy of people who run M&Ps without one.

So when I switched to the Glock 19, I ordered a Glock Lasergrip from Amazon. I didn't think anything about it until April, which was the first time I was having to reload the pistol on the clock and... holy cow did this thing complicate mag changes! Any benefit I'd gained from adding the Vickers mag release was negated by the fat battery saddlebag sitting right where my thumb needed to go to get to the release.

So it's a reluctant goodbye to the LG-619, too.

Ironically, Crimson Trace has just released a new product, the Laserguard Pro, which combines a light and laser into the footprint of the Lightguard. I'd put one of those things on my Glock 19 in a New York minute and figure out a way to mitigate the "Glock Knuckle" problem, but CTC is only going to offer them for the bitty little Glock 42/42 and not the normal-size Glock 19. Que sera, sera.

.

Froggy Life Flight

"Morgan got in touch with a frog hospital nearly 500 miles away in Cairns and an airline reportedly offered to carry the injured amphibian on one of its flights there.
“It was unbelievable coordination to be able to get the frog to us but he did eventually make it to Cairns and we picked him up from the airport,” Deborah Pergolotti, president of Frog Safe, told local media."

In case you were wondering what the dot at the top of the pyramid of Maslow’s Heirarchy was, now you know. You’ve pretty much gotta have the cave bears wiped out and a good handle on what next year’s crop is going to look like before you can start life-flighting frogs.
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More shooting...

I had one box left of that 115gr Blazer Brass. I also had half a box of Fiocchi 115gr ammo that, unusually for Fiocchi, had been extremely under-powered. I'd used it testing the Ruger 9E, where it had turned in an average velocity of 1035fps, with some rounds not even breaking the 1000fps velocity mark. That caused this in the Ruger:

Now, my Glock 17 is old, at least as Glocks go, with a serial number that dates it to 1992, but the recoil spring assembly is fresh, having been prophylactically replaced...*checks logbook*...428 rounds ago.

It's been running fine with the Blazer Brass, but how would it deal with this dregs of this defective lot of Fiocchi? (And I do mean defective. The velocity spread between the fastest and slowest rounds in a ten shot string was a full hundred and five feet per second.)

I ran the target out to seven yards and did a bunch of single shots and fast three- and four-shot strings from low ready with the Blazer Brass, before sending it out to fifteen yards to shoot at the upper A-zone with the Fiocchi.

The Fiocchi ran the gun fine. I wish the same could be said of me, but it was hard to make out the head box at 45 feet. I probably would have done better on a traditional bullseye, or even a free-standing USPSA target.

The CAP sights are such an improvement over the factory Glock sights, especially for shooting fast.

 .

Overcorrection...

Look, I know that The Little Golden Book of World War Two is incorrect when it teaches kids that the war started when Pearl Harbor got bombed and then the US saved everybody from Hitler with 1911s and Sherman tanks.

And I know that Hollywood has performed some amazingly ahistorical gaffes in the past with movies like U-571 that basically write the British out of the story and fabricate tales of American war-winning out of whole cloth.

But to leap from that into this quote is pure knee-jerk-ism...

"But despite "Band of Brothers," despite "Saving Private Ryan," despite those 11 photographs taken by Robert Capa in the swell on that morning of June 6 1944, D-Day was not a predominantly American effort. Rather, it was an Allied effort with, if anything, Britain taking the lead."

Band of Brothers was a story specifically about Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The reason the British are not portrayed in Band of Brothers is because...sit down, this is going to come as a shock...American Army units tend to be made up of Americans, while British people are usually in British army units.

I blame Star Trek for this bizarre inclusionism. I realize that there were Vulcans and Russians and Klingons and Scotsmen and African-Americans on the bridge of the Enterprise, and that's great! Maybe that's how it is in the 23rd Century. But there were darn few Japanese-Americans on the bridge of CV-6 at the Battle of Midway, and when some future war movie throws some in there because inclusionism, it's just going to be awkward. "No, Billy, your great granddad wasn't on the Enterprise at Midway; he was in a concentration camp in the desert. No, an American concentration camp."
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Overheard in the Office...

Bobbi is reading an '80s SF novel in the cyberpunk subgenre...

RX: "I don't think he knows much about cattle butchering. Twice now a cow has been killed off-camera and then people are eating steaks a very short time later. And he keeps making up calibers. He gave one character an HK 7mm pistol."

Me: "He knows 9mm is a real caliber, and Future Bullets are smaller. By giving somebody a smaller caliber, that's how you know it's the future, like having a black or woman president."

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Bobbi had the a/c off and a box fan running in her bedroom window last night, its low hum providing a pleasant white noise that had me sleeping the sleep of the Just...

...until about 0mygod30 this morning, just before dawn, when she turned it off and suddenly in my dream the red emergency lighting came on in the subterranean asteroid colony as the air-handling system went silent. That had me sitting bolt-upright in bed, let me tell you.
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I'm Winchester!

I've got at least a case of premium Winchester Ranger and Federal HST, but I'm danger low on 9mm FMJ practice ammo. How'd that happen?

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 8, 2016

Way of the Gauge

Darryl Bolke, who is a veritable fount of clue, drops some knowledge bombs to dispel the myths you hear about shotguns on the internets...

"One of my personal favorites is “you just need to rack the shotgun and criminals will run”. This is utter nonsense. In my first shooting, the two carjackers I was up against both told investigators individually in interviews that they heard me rack my Remington 870 as I exited my car. The effect it had was exactly nothing. They did not surrender or change their actions at all, other than to prepare for a fight."

You should go read it. Now.
.

Just shooting.

I had a box and most of another one of that CCI Blazer Brass 115gr FMJ...you know, the stuff that won't run the Canik or the Steyr reliably?...and so I took it and my Robar Custom Gen2 Glock 17 to Indy Arms Co. yesterday morning.

Robar-ed Glock with Ameriglo CAP sights, Vickers mag release, and Zev Fulcrum trigger, UpLULA, and Raven Eidolon holster.

Unlike the Canik and the Steyr, the Glock happily chewed through all ninety rounds without a malfunction.

I fat-fingered the target carrier controller and poked in 31 feet instead of the usual seven yards. Despite not being able to distinguish individual 9mm holes at that distance with my sunglasses on (let alone the faint lines around the scoring zones) I decided to go ahead and shoot from 10.33 yards anyway.

On the upside, I seem to be finally getting accustomed to the Zev Trigger in the Glock. Since I was by myself out on the range, I didn't feel bad about breaking the 1-rd/sec speed limit, and the whole reset-during-recoil/"flip and press" is coming a lot easier now.
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Automotif CXXIX...

Seen on my trip to the corner grocery store yesterday...

 ...a nice-looking butternut yellow '67 Camaro RS convertible.

Fender badges say it has the base 250c.i.d. inline six-cylinder, which means it would have a hard time matching the scintillating performance of, say, your typical Chevy Aveo rental car. Still, I wouldn't kick it out of the garage. If you're going to be in a pig-slow car, it may as well be a gorgeous one with a folding top.
.

What difference-at this point what difference does it make?

It matters when giving speeches on income inequality in a coat that cost more than my BMW.https://t.co/CmDo55ec6C https://t.co/AHY2Z6cQg1

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 7, 2016

What Media Bias?

So, late in the East Coast day yesterday, and TOTALLY COINCIDENTALLY just in time for the six o'clock news in places like, say, LA and San Francisco, NBC announced Hillary Clinton as the prospective Democratic Party nominee.

I'm sure whoever wrote the headline woke up this morning and was all like "Oh, shit! I totally forgot that the California primary was today! I hope nobody thinks we were trying to put our thumb on the scales!"
.

Light strikes twice in the same place...

I took the Steyr C9-A1 and a hundred rounds of TulAmmo 115gr FMJ ammo to Indy Arms Co yesterday to work on running up the round count.

On the one hand, the TulAmmo had a good track record of having enough steam to run the gun and not cause cycling or feeding problems. On the other hand...

...I might have mentioned before that while the Glock 19 had one light strike during its test and the P320 had three, this Steyr just does not like hard Russian primers. Two more light strikes this trip on rounds #42 and 65 of the day (#672 and 695 of the test) bring the total to seven failures to fire. That's 3:200 with TulAmmo, 4:50 with Wolf Polyformance, and one with regular ol' CCI Blazer Brass for those of you keeping score.

I fired one box at seven yards, and then backed the target out to ten yards and fired the other one at the head zone. The gun's easy to shoot well, and there were no failures to feed, extract, or eject.

This makes 730 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with seven failures-to-fire (#8, #472, #535, #555, #558, #672, #695), seven failures to extract (#234, #266, #276, #531, #535, #543, #558), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,270 rounds left to go.
.

Pretty much, yeah...

"Well, it's like political discourse, except for...hey, let's go ride our bikes!"#ExplainTwitterToA4YearOld

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 6, 2016

Automotif CXXVIII...

A common sight around Broad Ripple is this '64 or '65 Chevy van with the Fighting 31 insignia on both front doors and a host of veteran and 2A stickers in the back windows...
.

Safety Is For Always

Everybody with a logo-embroidered polo shirt wants to come up with a replacement for Cooper's Rule One: "All guns are always loaded." It's a target for the ire of everybody with the slightest hint of Aspie tendencies, because they plainly know that there's such a thing as an unloaded gun.

The entire point of Rule One is that when you are handling a firearm, you need to be mindful. You need to be constantly aware of the fact that what you have in your hand is not a banana or a can of soup but an object that can, under the right circumstances, discharge a projectile with lethal consequences.

Chuck Haggard says that one shouldn't have separate habits of handling for "loaded" and "unloaded" guns because when one is tired or distracted, one can inadvertently default to the wrong one. ("How do you dry-fire, Tam?" As though I'm expecting a loud noise at any moment. And I sure don't have that gun pointed at anything I'm not prepared to pay for if I'm wrong about the gun's status.)

That's why stuff like this sends me completely around the bend:

I could have snapped this exact pose, or a variant of it, a thousand times at the NRAAM. Ignoring for a moment the way his finger has migrated right to the trigger the way the swallows return to Capistrano, what in the name of sweet baby Odin is up with the way people pick up a purportedly "unloaded" handgun and immediately plop the muzzle into their offhand paw?

Remember the small-town Indiana police chief who creased his leg with his duty Glock because he holstered it along with the drawstring on his jacket? Go watch this video for a refresher. What's the first thing he did when he got the Glock 42 handed to him by the gun store clerk? He cradled the muzzle in the palm of his left hand. His left hand through which he had put a bullet some years earlier.

Let me reiterate that: He was resting the muzzle of the handgun inches from the bullet scar where he'd previously shot himself. How many times does one have to blow a hole in their hand to unlearn that goofy habit? More than one, apparently.


What you see there with the chief in the video and with the guy in the picture above is bad gun-handling habits at work. This is why, whether I'm handling an actual firearm or a SIRT or a blue gun or an airsoft or whatever, I am very conscious of where the muzzle is pointing and do not point or wave it around casually. I want the default, habitual behavior for when there is a gun-shaped object in my hand to be caution and awareness. I always want the action of aiming a gun at something to be a conscious and deliberate choice.

And I don't ever want to have to utter the words "Oh my God, I'm sorry! I thought it was unloaded!"

Bastards.

Meet the Press got bumped out of its normal time slot to 0800 this morning, which meant that it was preempted by the local news program here in Hoosieropolis.

I use Meet the Press to get blogging ideas, keep up with politics, and (importantly) pressure-test my cerebral arteries by yelling at senators on a Sunday morning. How am I supposed to pressure-test arteries watching the French Open?

Despite being a very physical sport to play, televised tennis ranks right up there with golf as a soporific, what with the metronomic whacking of the ball... pock!*grunt*-pock!*grunt*-pock!*grunt*...and the carefully hushed tones cultivated by the announcers, as though they knew that if they got excited about what they were watching, they might wake you up.
.

That New Shooter Smile...

It's often noted that people seem to have a lot more fun at a gun range than they do at the anti-gun range. Of course they do. "Free Beer!" is an easier sell than Temperance and always has been.

Besides, firing guns resonates on a very deep level, as I mentioned elsewhere*:

"Monkeys like throwing stuff and hitting things with it on a deep and primal level. Guns just let you fling poo like a rock star. You can't not like it."

*You know how I hate using up good material at an away game.

Elevenses.

After brunch yesterday morning, I ducked in at Indy Arms Co. with my last fifty-round box of .357SIG Speer Lawman...

That upper A-zone is hard for me with the junky factory plastic sights.

There were no stoppages or malfunctions of any kind to report.

This makes it 1100 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748), four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734), and one failure to eject (#1,033). 900 rounds left to go.
.

Hooray!

It's Fun Show time! Let's sing the Fun Show Song!

Flintlocks and Flop-tops
And Number Three Russians
Black-powder Mausers
From jackbooted Prussians,
Shiny Smith PC's from limited runs
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Socketed bay'nets
On Zulu War rifles,
Engraved, iv'ried Lugers
That make quite an eyefull
Mosin tomato stakes sold by the ton
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Rusty top-breaks!
Smallbore Schuetzens!
And all of Browning's spawn
I just keep on browsing my favorite guns
Until all my money's gone.

Unfortunately, it's that time of the freelance writer's month where the bills are paid and now one is eagerly awaiting the sound of the postman, in the hopes he might have brought more cashable mail. Therefore I doubt I'll be doing much other than staring longingly at stuff, but it'll be a chance to meet up with friends and keep up acquaintances.
.

Overheard at the Restaurant...

Bobbi, who didn't have to go work on starship engines until later than usual, treated me to brunch at Good Morning Mama's this morning.

While we were there I read on Marko's blog that there was an actual official Frontlines novels fan club that had formed on Facebook. I joined, just to get in on the ground floor...

Conversation at the table meandered around various topics of a bookish bent, and at some point, while looking at my Facebook screen, I muttered "I've never been Tuckerized."

The air grew chill...

RX: "That hurt."

Me: "I mean, present company exc... I mean, well, you had to Tuckerize me! You Tuckerized my cat!"

RX: "And she's a more interesting character than you!"

Ow.
.

Yum!

I have learned that if Twenty Tap has a special of the day, you should order that thing...

Lunch yesterday was a meatball sandwich on a hoagie roll. The meatballs were in a barbecue sauce that had blueberries in it. I mean, there were a couple actual whole blueberries floating around down in there. It was just delicious.
.

Ten-Fiddy...

Fifty more rounds of Speer Lawman 125gr FMJ through the Glock 32 yesterday morning at Indy Arms Co. Had one get pretty much completely away from me there. The sights hadn't yet settled when prepping the trigger turned into breaking the trigger. Ouch. There was much cursing.

There was one failure to eject on round #33 of the day (#1,033 of the test). This looks like a pretty conventional limp-wristing failure. I'm on the horns of a dilemma, here. With the 18# factory spring, I can keep the gun from going fully into battery almost at will, but the 20# spring is going to want a firm grip to prevent FTEs like the one above...

This makes it 1050 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748), four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734), and one failure to eject (#1,033). 950 rounds left to go.
.

Random Pic...

I love the stormtrooper Christmas tree lights festooning the area behind the bar at Twenty Tap...
.

Overheard in the Office...

Me: "...the crushing letdown of those comic book gadgets that didn't work..."

RX: "Like x-ray glasses?"

Me: "Sea Monkeys. I was crushed to find out they were just brine shrimp and not these little... For some kids, that moment of cynicism comes when you find out Santa Claus is just your parents. For me, it was discovering Sea Monkeys weren't little homunculi that would build castles in a fishbowl."

Halfway Point

When the AC isn't running on the indoor range and the air temperature's a sticky 88°F, sweaty hands magnify the jumpy nature of the Glock 32. Makes me want stippling, or maybe I'll order some adhesive grip treatment, like TalonGrips or AGrip.

Fifty rounds was about all the fun I cared to have with it yesterday morning, what with errands to run and other work to do.

The pistol went through the complete cycle of operation every time. It's halfway done with the two thousand rounds now.

This makes it 1000 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748) and four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734). 1,000 rounds left to go.
.

Automotif CXXVII...

Here's a puzzler, and no mistake. It was eye-catching enough that I hopped out of Bobbi's car and jogged across the parking lot to snap pics while she was waiting at the pharmacy drive-thru.

 It's a '70s Pontiac Grand LeMans....

 ...whose taillights say '76 or '77...

...but which sports the 12-slot "Endura" front end of a '74 or '75 Can Am. Note that someone included a "6.5 Litre" badge on the decklid trim.

Regardless, it's a pretty cool ride.
.

Sport non-Utility

New Jovian Thunderbolt ponders the utility of the new .45 Shield.

I dunno. Dude lives in Maryland. A Shield in a state w/no concealed carry would be like a car on an island with no roads or gas stations. Sure, it might be cool to own, but what would you do with it?
.

Confidence booster...

Last week's dismal outings with the Glock 32 having left a bad taste in my mouth, I decided on a quick stop at the range to cheer myself up and maybe regain a little confidence.

I had a couple partial boxes of .40 FMJ left over from the M&P Shield test article. Consolidated, it was thirty-five rounds of .40 that I had no real plans for, so I divvied it up between three mags and dropped the factory barrel back in the Glock 35.

On the way to the grocery store, I detoured to Indy Arms Co and ran in with ear muffs in one hand and a zippered pistol pouch in the other. "I just need a freebie target and a place to stand and launch bullets for a couple minutes," I said, sliding my driver's license across the counter to hold a lane.

"That little guy? I wouldn't worry about that little guy."

Run the target out to a nice, easy five yards and pop through the three magazines at a relaxed, metronome pace... BOOM-one-thousand-BOOM-two-thousand-BOOM...

That felt better.

I went on to the grocery store in an altogether better mood.
.

Defined Down...

"MASS SHOOTING IN HOUSTON!" I heard, so I went to the Googles to see what had happened. The top result turned up a local TV report that was subtitled "New details in the shooting rampage that left two dead..."

Reading along, I come across this:

"The victim who died in the shooting was identified today as 56-year-old Eugene Linscomb, according to the Harris County Medical Examiner's website."

...and I realize that when they say "that left two dead", they're including the scrote that did the shooting in the first place.

Stop including the dirtbag(s) in your tally to run up the score, will you?
.

Down the Well

While I was at Raven Concealment's booth at the NRAAM, Michael Goerlich pressed a ziploc bag with one of RCS's newer offerings into my hands with a "Here, try this." Well, okay. I'm game to try new stuff, and in this case I already had the perfect host gun in mind...

I popped the Pearce grip plug out of Project Whimsy and prepared to attach the Freya mag well...

Because I am not dumb, I read the included instructions carefully. (It was only, like, eight paragraphs, dude. It's not like it was Dostoevsky or anything.)

Like the ad copy says, there's enough clearance to get some purchase on the flooplate and rip out a stuck mag. Not a terribly common occurrence with double-column/single-feed mag guns with external extractors, but there you go...

It doesn't add a ton to the size of the gun. Its effect on concealment would depend on where you were carrying it and which gun you had it on. I think it could be a serious help on a G19-size gun for people with wide hands, but I don't know...

Some people decry this as "gamer", but in most games this modification would push your Glock into a class where you were competing against hot-rodded $3k custom 2011s. I do know one game where it might prove useful for me, though, and that's at local bowling pin matches....

Now, seeing as how the Glock is already a gun with a cavernous magwell and a tapered magazine, the real effect on reload times is going to have to await me getting some time in with my ShotMaxx...
.

Good night, internet! See you in the morning!

Okay, we'll see what kind of beer the Etruscans drank... #beer #dogfishhead #birraetrusca #archaeology

A photo posted by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on May 30, 2016 at 6:56pm PDT

This probably makes me a bad person, but...

...my first thought on seeing the pictures of the P-47 that was recovered from the Hudson River was "Oh, thank Wilbur & Orville the prop blades are straight!"

"But Tamara!" you say, "A man died in that plane!" Yes, but before he did, he looks to have feathered the prop. If the motor wasn't running and the prop was feathered when it hit the water, the engine might not be a mess of bent connecting rods and could be easy to make airworthy again. I mean, for a given value of "easy".

.

Memorial Day 2016

Remember.

:(

My friend Ray passed away this morning.

If you haven't read his blog, you should. You know that while "the internet is forever", a lot of it can be horribly ephemeral. One day that site that was full of long and thoughtful essays on a multitude of topics from a smart, freedom-loving individual is going to wind up squatted by some Indonesian spam farm. Go read now.
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Automotif CXXVI...

Seen in the parking lot at the NRAAM, a 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

1977 was nearing the nadir (what a fortunate homonym!) of American automotive performance.

The base Monte Carlo of Jimmy Carter's inaugural year shipped with a 2-bbl 305 cubic inch V8 that wheezed out an underwhelming 140 net horsepower. This gasping iron-block lungfish was plopped in a "midsize" car so big that the average NFL team would probably need two running plays to get from the hood ornament to the trunk latch.

But it sure looked good, and any Cletus with a wrench and a SuperShop in the neighborhood strip mall could unlock a lot more power out of that motor...

Math is hard...

Not voting for #Trump is voting for #Hillary, but not voting for Hillary isn't voting for Trump?
1+2=3, but 3-2≠1: Trumpers can't STEM?

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 28, 2016

Not voting for #Trump is voting for #Hillary, but not voting for Hillary isn't voting for Trump?
1+2=3, but 3-2≠1: The New Republican Math.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 28, 2016

Pause

There'll be a pause in the Glock 32 firing until some more ammo shows up. The last box of the .357SIG care package from Lucky Gunner, some American Eagle 125gr FMJ, went downrange yesterday. Since fifty rounds of centerfire just doesn't do it for a range trip, I brought along the Glock 17 with the ZEV Fulcrum to get some more live-fire time in with it.

So, I dumped the .357SIG, thirty-nine rounds of which I'd already had loaded into mags, into the lower A-zone at a "Let's just get this done" pace before switching to the G17.

The ZEV trigger still confounds me. It is light (for a Glock trigger) and smooth, but there is no "wall" before the break in live fire. In firing multiple-shot strings, I get off the trigger during recoil and start prepping it again so that I'm ready to shoot as the sights settle on the target. The holes scattered out around the periphery of the shot group in the middle show what happens when there's so little distinction between "prepping the trigger" and the actual firing of the gun itself. I wonder what a NY1 spring would do to this pull?

There were no problems of any kind with the Glock 32, BTW. This marks a hundred rounds with the 20# replacement recoil spring.

This makes it 950 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748) and four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734). 1,050 rounds left to go.
.

Disappointed...

I saw that a member at a forum on which I post had the handle "Woo Pig".

I chuckled, thinking that was a clever riff on "War Pig". Like maybe the dude's into both firearms and aromatherapy and moxibustion or something?

I clicked on his profile to discover he was an Arkansas Razorbacks fan.

*sigh*

I like the world in my head better...
.

Under Pressure

Clifford the Big Red Watch having been replaced with an Apple Watch, I no longer have a handy barometer-at-a-glance strapped to my wrist. I mean, I'm sure there's a watch face setup with the Apple Watch that would put a barometer readout there for me but I haven't been arsed to find it since it's really not necessary.

You see, as it turns out, the only time I glanced at Clifford's barometer reading was to confirm that yes, indeed, my right shin was hurting like a sumbitch. Like it is right now.
.

Almost halfway done...

Range day yesterday morning: Fifty rounds of Winchester 125gr FMJ and fifty of American Eagle 125gr FMJ from Lucky Gunner.

I had...or rather, Jeff at Indy Arms Company had already replaced the magazine springs with 11-coil units from full-size Glock mags, which should eliminate the problem of the slide outrunning the magazine spring's ability to get the next round into position in time. I will note that with the eleven-coil springs, you will definitely be wanting a Maglula UpLULA to assist in getting the last round or two into the magazine.

In the little ziploc baggie is a 20# ISMI flat-wire recoil spring, two pounds heavier than the stock unit, with the intention of keeping the slide from bottoming out so viciously against the frame and exacerbating the gun's muzzle flip.

The first box of fifty, the Winchester stuff, was fired into the lower cluster of shots. Everything fed fine and there were no malfunctions. I then switched out the recoil assembly and loaded up the American Eagle and fired it at the head area of the B-21E target.

Again, the weapon went through the complete cycle of operation with all fifty rounds. Further, gone was the feeling that I could induce a "failure to go into battery" malfunction at will by not gripping the gun firmly enough. Lastly, the heavier spring seemed to have the gun shooting much flatter, as though the slide were no longer slamming violently to a stop at the end of its travel. I'd love to look at this with some high-speed video.

At any rate, that makes 900 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with four failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126, #748) and four failures to feed (#221, #224, #282, #734). 1,100 rounds left to go.
.

#PeaceInOurTime #Reset

Now is a time when we need a great statesperson at the nation's helm! #Hillary2016 #gohillary pic.twitter.com/hxMBbqN2Tc

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 27, 2016

EDIT: #TMWYR that people have no clue who Neville Chamberlain is, nor do they recognize one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th Century. Which, when you think about it, handily explains the mess in which we find ourselves...

Tab Clearing...

• "How to Be a Gunwriter" by Weaponsman is a pretty good primer on the topic. The most important thing, of course, is to write. Which I need to be doing right now, actually.


• Got to finally meet wheelgun guru Grant Cunningham at the NRA Annual Meeting. We geeked out over Korths. As a sidenote, why is everybody losing their minds over the price tag on the Korth? Nobody blinks an eye at a $3k high-end 1911, after all.


• Why pretend to be looking around when you should really be looking around?

Spring Thing

On the advice from a friend who has experience with Glock 32s, I've swapped the magazine springs in the Glock 32 mags for the eleven-coil ones from full-size Glock mags. This is to cure this problem here:

I also picked up a 20# ISMI recoil spring. The factory unit is the same 18# recoil spring assembly used in the Glock 19, and you can feel the slide bottoming hard against the frame. I'm going to at least experiment with the heavier spring and see what it does. You'll notice that with the Gen4 guns, Glock introduced a dedicated recoil spring assembly for the .357/.40 guns, rather than just using the 9mm one. I'm filing that under the "clue" column.
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Note to self:

Apparently when Sudafed said it would turn off the snot faucet for twelve hours, they didn't mean "...in a row."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 25, 2016

Does size really matter?

Thus far I've been shooting a bunch of Lucky Gunner's .357SIG ammo through my Glock 32, which has a 4" barrel. Since .357SIG's stock in trade is blazing speed, would a little more barrel help?

To find out, I took the Glock 35 I had converted to 9mm, and converted it back to its .40 configuration, and then dropped in a 5.32" Lone Wolf .357SIG conversion barrel.

I was dreading doing the re-converting, because I had even changed the extractor and trigger housing (which contains the ejector) to the appropriate 9mm parts, but I needn't have worried. Even my ten-thumbed self had the frame and slide stripped down, the parts swapped, and the gun reassembled in fifteen minutes.

So it was off to the range with a chronograph and some ammo...

American Eagle 125gr FMJ
LO: 1386
HI: 1410
AV: 1397
ES: 23.58
SD: 9.16

Federal HST Tactical 125gr JHP
LO: 1358
HI: 1416
AV: 1392
ES: 58.36
SD: 15.96

Hornady XTP 147gr JHP
LO: 1228
HI: 1259
AV: 1243
ES: 31.32
SD: 9.64

Those averages are, respectively, 53fps, 36fps, and 55fps more than the shorter-barreled gun. It's not a ton of improvement, but it's there. The long-slide gun also shot a whole bunch flatter than the compact 32. The small gun borders on being a handful, while the bigger one is almost docile. Without having yet tried them on the clock, I'm betting splits on harder targets, such as steel plates at 20+ yards, will be noticeably quicker.
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Well, that wasn't the problem...

So, if you'll recall my misadventures with the Steyr C9-A1 and the Wolf Polyformance 115gr FMJ ammo...

I stopped by the Steyr booth at the show. I mentioned to the guys in the booth that I'd been shooting one and asked if there was an updated extractor available for the gun. He allowed as there was, and I said that was a good thing, because mine's been a complete dumpster fire so far.

He also told me about the Steyr's tight European tolerances and how I should avoid weak ammunition because a finely crafted piece like the C9 would be a fussier eater than...other guns. I think I did a good job of keeping a straight face, but you'll have to ask Kevin if I really did or not.

Canis lupus lupus, the Steyr's bête noire

So, anyway, from the wild ejection pattern of the Wolf and the number of malfs, I had surmised on that previous range session that the Wolf was extremely variable in velocity, with weak rounds failing to run the gun and hot ones functioning it fine. I saved ten rounds to take to the range and test over the chrono...

Here are the results:

Wolf Polyformance 115gr FMJ
LO: 1150
HI: 1178
AV: 1159
ES: 28.56
SD: 9.74

That's...well, pretty much the opposite of inconsistent. As a matter of fact, it borders on freakishly consistent for cheap FMJ ammo. I think it's safe to say that the problems are with the Steyr, hopefully they can be solved by an upgraded extractor, because otherwise this thing is just way too annoyingly fussy for me to bother with. If I take a pistol to the range, I want to be able to buy whatever cheap range fodder they have there without worrying whether my gun will run it or not.

At least the ten-round chrono string went off without a malfunction.

This makes 630 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with five failures-to-fire (#8, #472, #535, #555, #558), seven failures to extract (#234, #266, #276, #531, #535, #543, #558), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,370 rounds left to go.
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Oh, please, no...

Drifted to sleep on the futon in the living room last night with earbuds in, listening to the dulcet tones of Ballistic Radio. Now I'll have to re-download that episode.

Woke up still fully clothed and...oh, no...with my soft palate all tender and bruised feeling, the usual forerunner of a sore throat. And then my nose started running. Oh, please don't let this be "con crud"; I've had more than enough sick days this year.
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I guess it was inevitable.

Instead of a SHOT Show unveiling, Smith & Wesson waited until mid-May and the NRAAM to drop their newest offering, a .45ACP addition to the M&P Shield line of single-stack subcompacts:

Shown here with the flush-fit six-round magazine in the paw of your faithful correspondent, the .45 Shield is practically indistinguishable, size-wise, from the 9mm/.40 version unless the two are side-by-side. Smith has pictures. It's distinctly slender-er than its most obvious rival, the Glock 36. I'd have to see it next to a Kahr P45 to be certain, but I'd say they're roughly comparable in size.

SayUncle hand-models for you here, with the seven-round extendo. Smith claims a weight only a few ounces more than a classic Model 36 Chief's Special J-frame. I have not verified this.
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I'm not gonna take it anymore.

If the purpose of advertising is to make you stop and look, this worked.

I was indeed stopped in my tracks, temporarily bereft of the ability to even.

So, I'm supposed to be taking my 1911-buying advice from underemployed Eighties hair metal singers now? Also, if Dee Snyder's so into 1911s, how come we can only get country friggin' music at our annual NRA soirees?
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Home again, home again, jiggety-jig...

I am back home again in Indiana.

Blogging should resume shortly, after I hydrate. Beer has water in it, right?
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Can't I just phone this one in?

Sunday morning and my head is emptier than an Ethiopian pantry.

I've got to get out on the floor here soon and sweep up the corners I missed the first two days. Something like normal blogging should resume tomorrow.

Also, I would have been uploading all kinds of pictures of stuff, but I forgot my laptop power supply at home, so that's going to have to wait 'till I get home, too. If you have the Instagramming, there are photos there.

Second Amendment Cosplay

There have been some amusing displays of exhibitionary open carry this year, but nothing truly noteworthy. I guess for some people, a gun show or convention like this is their only chance to really signal tribal affiliations, so they go all in.

And when you think about it as cosplay, a con's the perfect place for it.

Renaissance or end of the line?

This is a pretty slick little wheelgun. I'd love to run one for a bit.

The cynic in me wants to say, however, that the revolver market share is teetering on the brink of precipitous shrinkage. Five or ten years from now, don't be shocked to find nothing but cowboy guns, large magnum hunting revolvers, a scattering of J-frame-type guns for diehard old guys to carry, and the occasional odd lungfish like the Judge or Governor.

The generation who was introduced to guns from video games and action movies just don't seem to bond with the wheelies, by and large.
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Rise of the Machines...

"Soft-Off" power buttons, which I seem to recall showed up with Win95, are the bane of my existence. I miss having an easily-accessible thing on the front of my PC's case that would turn off the power to the MoBo. When I tell a machine to turn off, I don't want it giving me any lip; I want it turning off. This is the first step towards SkyNet, mark my words.

EDIT: Think about it: "Soft-Off" power buttons impose a software layer between the button and the power supply. You are not turning off the computer, you are asking the computer if it would like to turn off. This doesn't sit right with me, one little bit.
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