Category Archives: Guns

A short hunting story

Guns, Home life, Uncategorized

My son and I went deer hunting opening weekend. Packed up and drove to south-central WA to camp out and chase mule deer for a couple of days. Weather was fine, dry and clear, getting lower 40s overnight and a high in the 60s in the afternoon. He’s old enough now to be a hunting partner in the sense of “I’ll post up here, you sneak around that-a-way and circle around over there” or “you hang out here and watch those openings, I’ll tromp through that side of things and see what I can flush out,” not just “follow me around and let’s see what we can find together.”  We have shot together before, at the range and at Boomershoot, so I know he is capable of shooting reasonably well under controlled conditions.

But hunting ain’t targets. Decisions and unknowns are involved.

Saturday (opening day) at dusk, after we’ve both seen numerous does and a couple of spike bucks, in the failing light, he was posted out by himself with a 30-06 and a view parallel to an access road across a draw, a nearly 400 yards across top-to-top. He was on a patch of broken volcanic rock with clear field of view and fire, but rather uncomfortable. He saw coming out of the trees (heavy thickets of oak) a herd of does, and one large buck. But with the fading light with only a 9-power scope, at about 300 yards distance he couldn’t tell if the buck had the 3-pt minimum needed to legally shoot. After watching them for about ten minutes, he told me what he saw over the radio, he sounded like he was pretty sure he could make the shot count (no wind, good positioning and rest, comfortable estimate of the range, etc.) if he chose to take it, and the best advice I could give amounted to “light’s not getting any better. Use your best judgement and make your call, then pull the trigger or put the rifle on SAFE.” Continue reading A short hunting story →

Liberator Pistol Mk II

Guns

During WWII, the US manufactured a million FP-45 “Liberator” pistols, at a cost of slightly more than $2 each (about $35 today by official inflation calculations, likely twice that by real inflation), to be air-dropped into occupied territory in Europe in order to arm the resistance unit. The goal wasn’t that it was a great weapon; the purpose was to be just good enough to kill an enemy soldier at point blank range and take HIS gun.

If the US (or anyone else) were to do something like that today, with slightly higher aspirations and the following specs for the RFP, what cartridge, materials, and basic design layout do you think would work best, and what would the unit price be if bought in bulk?

  1. No regard for any particulars of firearms laws in any country; it’s a rebellion weapon.
  2. Designed around a subsonic round, with integral suppressor.
  3. Iron signs, but with simple rail or attachment points for optic
  4. Simple construction, maintenance, operation
  5. 5MOA accuracy or better at 100m

Thoughts?

Edit to Add: 2.A) Either integral suppressor or threaded for a suppressor. Obvious trade-offs on size, concealability, size with/without suppression. production costs. An integral sup will make a smaller package than a threaded barrel with the suppressor attached.

2.B) It may be designed to use a sub-sonic loading of a normally supersonic round, with a box of sub-sonic ammo to be shipped / dropped with it for initial engagements, but able to use local resupply. For example, 300 Blackout is “normally” available in subsonic, as is 10mm or 45 ACP, but  7.62x39mm Russian is not (normally ~124 gr at 2300-2450 fps), though  220 gr subsonic can be found. Obviously a “common” ammo type has tradeoffs over a “rare” ammo type.

That was (relatively) fast

Current News, Guns, politics

The Supreme court has directed district courts to reconsider some cases in light of the Bruen decision.
SUPREME COURT REVERSES LOWER COURT RULINGS ON MAG BAN, “ASSAULT WEAPONS” BAN, CARRY BAN

One of these, the 9th Circuit item, will directly affect the WA state mag limit law. They said:

Petition GRANTED. Judgment VACATED and case REMANDED for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U. S. ___ (2022).

It should be a pretty much immediate “that law isn’t legal, it’s struck down” this week. I think Joe’s take is more realistic, quote:

My prediction:

  1. They will initially say it doesn’t apply to them because the case remanded was in California and Washington is “different”.
  2. They should be prosecuted, but nothing will happen in that direction.
  3. SAF’s lawsuit will have to go to the judge which will respond to a petition for summary judgement.
  4. The judge will delay because the 9th Circuit is taking their time responding to reality.
  5. The 9th Circuit will delay at least a few months.
  6. The Washington case will be resolved a month or more after the 9th decides.

So… we will be deprived of our rights until the end of the year or maybe the first quarter of 2023. And none of the criminals who deprived us of our rights will even be considered for prosecution.

End quote.

Sadly, he’s likely correct. Maybe it can be made a winning issue in the election.

Reloading mass quantities, II

Guns

Got case lube? Check.
Got spare decapping die pins? Check.
Got spare resizing die decapping rod assembly? Check.
Got spare resizing die decapping pins? Check.
Got spare resizing die bushing? Check.
Got crimped primer pocket swager? On order.
Got stuck case remover? Uhhhhhh…?

The one problem with saving up brass until you have a lot of it to do at once so you can batch process it is that you get all the problems you might experience all at once, too. So a bent decapping rod or pin or assembly I have spares on hand, but I had a piece of brass jump above the shellplate and get jammed WAY up into the resizing die (the press has pretty good leverage on the last part of the power-stroke), and no easy way to get it under the shellplate to pull to back out. There is such a thing as the “RCBS Stuck Case Remover”  but I did not have one on hand, and shipping at this time of year may not be lighting fast. After some fiddling about I managed to goober something together to extract the case without breaking anything too badly. But I realize I really need a proper garage workbench with a vice on it. Oh, well.

More than 2k pieces of brass resized, decapped, and trimmed to length so far, and quite a pile of brass shavings and used primers to show for it. More to go, yet, though. Then I get to sort it into piles, be interesting to see if I get a similar distribution to this spreadsheet.

Reloading mass quantities

Guns

I’ve accumulated a larger pile of assorted 223 brass than I thought I had (2.5k+), and now I’m trying to figure out the best way to reload it all. I have a Dillon progressive press, and don’t want to have to handle the brass more than I have to, but I also want to make some reasonably accurate loads for precision shooting, and some training / blasting / plinking ammo loads for general purpose. The brass is somewhat sorted, in that it is generally in batches that were accumulated together, and each bag is mostly a similar type, even if not all exactly identical. Most is commercial, some is 5.56 NATO military brass. It’s all been run through the polisher (corn cob media), but some of it has been stored a while and isn’t exactly shiny-new looking.

Continue reading Reloading mass quantities →