SAF Sues Maryland Over Permit Denial.

        

According to New Zealand anyway . I am sure its for the children.

        

The current Indian government seems to have a short memory as they change the constitution that Ghandi worked so hard for.

“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look back upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”  —GHANDI

        

Violate a zoning law? No gun for you .

        

Cheaper Than Dirt to start selling guns online .

        

L.A. County to destroy 8,300 guns.

        

CTD has an interview with Top Shot Kelly Bachand .

One question I would ask is: what's with the tape on your shooting glasses? My seven year old does that when she shoots.

        

Instead, the Brits are punishing a Gurkha just because he chopped the head off of a Taliban Warlord.

via SayUncle

        

Squib load mishap.

TDIOhio is a world class shooty school located in Southern Ohio.  They release a very informative monthly newsletter that highlights not only their program, but other topics of interest to the training and shooting community. Their current release featured a story of a recent squib load that destroyed an M16 but fortunately did not seriously harm the shooter.  Squib loads are actually rare but even though all NRA instructors mention them as part of any NRA sanctioned class, we sometimes do not give them the attention that they warrant.  The following is reprinted by permission from TDIOhio .

M16 Explodes On The Range — Greg Ellifritz

“Every firearm is just one round away from disassembling.”- Pat Rogers

Last week I was conducting a rifle training class for my officers. I was supervising the firing of our government surplus M-16 rifles at the 25 yard line. I had 5 officers on line firing the drill, 10 rounds in 10 seconds from the standing position.

Midway through the firing string I heard a loud explosion and saw one of my officers staggering off of the line, bleeding from his face. I called for cease fire and went over to check him out.

After a couple of seconds I determined that he was not badly injured and that his rifle had blown up. He told me that he was firing and had a malfunction. He pulled the trigger and nothing happened. He immediately executed a “tap rack” malfunction clearing drill. He said he saw an empty case being ejected from the rifle and thought that his rifle had failed to extract. The new cartridge went into the chamber and he pulled the trigger again. That’s when the gun blew up.

The officer said that it felt like he was punched hard in the face. He had a small cut from flying shrapnel on the bridge of his nose. He was very glad he was wearing safety glasses.

The rifle was locked up tight. It was a government surplus M-16 A1. The charging handle would not move. The magazine was blown out of the rifle and all the rounds were scattered on the ground. Some of the live rounds were seriously dented and damaged. There was a long crack on the top of the upper receiver, running underneath the carry handle for it’s entire length. I could see the underside of the bolt carrier was peeled back like a banana.

The bolt was closed, so I was able to separate the upper and lower receivers. I soaked the upper in penetrating oil and was finally able to open the action by beating on it with a 6lb sledgehammer….nothing else would work!

When I took it apart, the bottom of the bolt carrier was fractured, the upper receiver was bowed, with the dust cover bent into a gentle u-shape. The extractor was bent, but remained pinned into the bolt. There was a blown up empty case welded into the chamber. The case-head ruptured on its upper right side. The barrel was clear of any obstructions. The lower was undamaged.

What happened???

I think the malfunction that the officer experienced was actually a squib load. The cartridge probably had no gunpowder. The primer likely fired but the officer didn’t hear it because of the other firing on the line. The power of the primer drove the bullet just inside the barrel, where it got stuck. When the next bullet was fired behind it, all the gas was directed backwards into the upper receiver. It went down (blowing out the magazine) and up (cracking the receiver). The pressure also blew both bullets out of the barrel.

The ammunition we were using was [Withheld by Webmaster] steel case 55grain full metal jacket practice cartridges. We’ve fired more than 100,000 rounds of this ammo without any previous incident.

I called [Withheld by Webmaster] and spoke with one of their technicians. He agreed with my assessment and is in the process of replacing our upper receiver free of charge. Out of curiosity I also asked him about the possibility of an overloaded case. I did not know it, but he told me that with the powder they use in that round, they couldn’t stuff enough in the case to cause it to blow up.

Lessons learned:

ALWAYS WEAR EYE PROTECTION! If this officer hadn’t been wearing safety glasses he could have suffered serious eye damage.

Be alert for strange sounds. If your rifle makes a loud noise or an especially weak report, stop and check it out. I know that most tactical trainers (myself included) advocate a non-diagnostic immediate action drill when experiencing a malfunction. It’s fine to train that way for most malfunctions, but if you hear an odd noise on firing, take the time to be more thorough. Unload the gun and check the barrel for obstructions and damage. The same thing can happen in handguns too!

Always have another gun! This type of catastrophic firearms failure is rare, but it does occur. I’ve seen it happen several times and had it happen to me twice. When it happens your gun will not be operational! If that happened in a gunfight, you’d need another gun to carry on. That’s why I generally carry 2 guns all the time!

Use good ammo. This ammunition was of generally high quality. We haven’t had any problems with it in the past and I will continue to use it. Sometimes a bad case makes it through. It happens. It happens a lot more with crap ammo. That $10 per case you save by buying junk ammo at the gun show may be more expensive in the long run.

Go here to sign up for TDI's mailing list. They are also on Facebook .

        

only Sith Lords will have guns.

Darth Vader Robs Bank on Long Island

        

TDIOhio is a world class school offering a variety of courses for law enforcement and the armed citizen from basic handgun all the way through the spectrum to an emergency medical class. In between are courses of study that include advanced handgun, close quarters combat, knife fighting, precision and tactical rifle classes, advanced concealed carry and more. One of the annual favorites is Tactical Shotgun.

I have attended TDI off and on since about 1999. I am not affiliated with them in any way other than as a paying student.  While I am a fan, I am not a "fanboy" or "groupie" as Tam spotlighted in a post about training a few days ago.  The school is first rate and is in the proverbial back yard for me (about 45 minutes away).  Three kids under the age of 7 keep me from attending as often as I would like. Since I haven't had the time to take Tactical Shotgun , I thought I would share a review from someone that attended very recently.

The following is a post made by "Morne" on Ohioans For Concealed Carry Forums.

My New Year’s resolution was to attend some sort of tactical shotgun class. I figured that this was where the most improvement to my shooting/HD skills would come from. Especially since I rely on a shotgun for home defense.

Having been to Tactical Defense Institute (TDI) on two previous occasions for the Fun-N-Guns I looked at their class offerings and noticed that they had a tactical shotgun course. Given their excellent reputation, buttressed by the positive reviews from other forum members who have taken their handgun I-III classes, I decided to give them a shot.

Before signing up for the class, I e-mailed TDI to inquire as to whether my current shotgun would be appropriate for the course. You see, my HD shotty is also the very first gun I ever bought; a wood stocked pump-action Mossberg 500 12-ga with a 20” slug barrel. She sports a $12 sling and an elastic shell cuff for holding a few extras. No lights, lasers, pistol grips, collapsible stocks, compensators, red dots, tactical slings or side-saddles on my gun. This is simplicity at its finest. Mr. Benner himself responded to my e-mail, saying that just such a shotgun would be fine for the class. With that, I signed up.

When I arrived Saturday morning I signed in and paid up. While the nominal course fee is $300, TDI is running a special (limited time only) where they give 10% discount to those paying in cash. You still reserve the class with a credit card, of course, but just hand over the money at sign-in. I figure that saving $30 is worth a trip to the ATM and so opted for the discounted cash price.

The recommended load of shells for the class is 300 birdshot, 25 buckshot and 15 slugs. I used ALL my birdshot and wished that I had about 50 more. So if you go, take extras of everything. Yes, this will make your bag VERY heavy. Dang near strained myself getting the ammo bag to the car.

The start of the course involved Mr. Benner showing the difference between birdshot and various buckshot brands at different distances. He pointed out that you need to pattern your defense load for YOUR specific gun at the distances you expect to need it. This was a touch old hat for me, having long since patterned my HD shotty.

Mr. Benner also demonstrated proper recoil management including shooting a shotgun one-handed (while smoking a cigar) with very little muzzle flip. All of the shooting we did was “squared up” to the target, which worked a lot better than I thought it might. Just like with rifles, if you use proper technique you can handle the punishment that it is trying to dish out to your shoulder. That’s not to say you won’t get a bruise, because you will, but it doesn’t have to pound you into dust, either.

We practiced loading. While this might seem intuitive, loading a shotgun tactically is rather different than loading it while under no stress. Things like keeping an eye on the threat area become important in a tactical situation. You also need to learn to “abandon” a shell that you accidentally drop. Much skin is lost from the thumb by positively shoving shells into the tube far enough that it won’t pop out. The fast technique for “throwing in” a shell for an open bolt reload was WAY COOL! Most of all, they stressed that when there is a lull in the action it is important to “top off”. In other words, keep stuffing shells into the tube until it won’t accept anymore.

There were a number of speed drills done that were REALLY fun. Some were individual, others team. I was on “Team Mulligan”. While you would think that the semi-auto shotties would dominate the speed drills, it wasn’t really so. When engaging multiple targets the time lag between shots can be used to pump a shotty while swinging the barrel. The fastest semi-auto gunner in my group only bested my time to engage 3 targets by about 0.25 seconds.

We did drills that required firing (and loading) on the move. Trying to keep “squared up” was hard to do, certainly need to practice that some more. We also shot both strong and weak side, including transition drills. TONS of fun!

We did shotgun to handgun transition drills. As a cross-dominant shooter I came to this very naturally. Even with a regular (non-tacticool) sling like mine it can be done quickly. And I put the skill to good use later on.

At night we did low-light shooting drills. Part of this was using a handheld light while working your gun (yes, they even made the guys with weapon-mounted-lights do this). Another part was moving and firing while using the light in “flash-scan” mode. OODLES OF FUN!!!

Towards the end of it all we did some close-quarters drills. Just about everyone could use one of the two techniques Mr. Benner demonstrated. For a “surprise” snap shot, it would certainly be effective. Plus, the recoil was almost non-existent.

Doing the live-fire house was VERY challenging. Unlike at a Fun-N-Gun, there was no prior walk through. You had no idea where targets were. Hallways SUCK with a shotty. Of course, I shot the no-shoot target. OOOOOPS. However, on the very last target when my shotty ran dry after the first shot (I was double-tapping them all) I immediately transitioned to my revolver and triple-tapped the BG target. THAT was fun!

Off to the rifle range! We shot slugs at 25, 50 & 75 yards. And while I didn’t shoot a 1-inch group at 25 yards it wasn’t that much bigger (thank you, AppleSeed training). I was certainly the best shot with slugs in my group.

Then we went to the upper range where we went through a VERY LONG string of firing from cover and moving. This was VERY fatiguing. Didn’t look hard at first, but once you got out there it sapped your strength QUICKLY.

Lastly was the jungle walk. This was AWESOME. Going down a dense-forest path with steel knock-down targets on both sides. Of course, I missed one – as in didn’t even SEE him.

Let’s discuss equipment. Failures were happening all over with many kinds/models of guns/equipment (except for my old Mossy). I saw a red-dot go down, sights fall off guns, weapon-mounted-lights fail, a fore-end come off, semi-autos jam (especially after a couple of hundred shells) and so forth. Even guys with awesome custom equipment ran into some difficulties once they got tired and their guns got grungy. At least one guy who brought two (2) shotguns had them BOTH seriously malfunction.

Conclusions:

1 – This was my first TDI class. I was VERY impressed and will likely take more.

2 – The instructors were very good and numerous. If you needed 1-on-1 attention, you got it.

3 – Clearing any area of targets (even ones that aren’t shooting back at you) is very stressful.

4 – Semi-autos are very fast, but not really a huge edge over pump guns. But for a small number of rounds, such as is used in a HD scenario, that small edge might be worth the trade-off in cost and susceptibility to dirt.

        

CTD has posted a nice interview they did with Top Shot Denny Chapman.

        

Police responded Friday to a call of shots fired at a home in Roberts, Wisconsin and found a man responding to an attack by clowns .

Yeah, he was on dope. However, if there was a home attacked by clowns, and mark my words it will happen one terrifying day, I would expect such actions to be justified and righteous.

Clowns [shudder].

        

to the FirearmBlog .  Three years blogging today .  I started this blog four years ago last July. The FirearmsBlog is what I wanted this blog to be but I just couldn't ignore politics and snarkdom. At least these days I at least try to keep my b.s. gun related.

Steve has been able to rise and stay above all of that. Congratulations to a very fine blog. It is one of the first places I go every day to flat out steal material from.

        

I just opened a new can of H4350. Heh.

        

TheFirearmsBlog , also known as "list of things I covet blog", is hosting a contest sponsored by  LuckyGunner where one lucky gunblogger will win a heavy box of ammo for his lucky gun.

        

Tam has advice on staying alert and alive .

"Carry a gun. Practice getting to it from awkward positions. Stay aware of your surroundings. If something feels wrong, listen to your feelings and turn around and leave: You can recover quickly from embarrassment, but forty stitches in your mouth take a long time to heal..."

Well said. Too many folks will get on that elevator with the obvious socio-pathic mouth-breather that just raised your hackles because "you don't want to seem rude".

        

At least according to the mayor of West Burlington, Iowa named Hans Trousil .  Lets see how he likes the "crap" when the city has to pay attorneys to defend their losing position or, more likely just give it up.

        

This time in New York!

SAF Sues Westchester County over may-issue nonsense.  Go Alan.

        

"We're not going to tolerate any weapons coming in the door."

So says Rehaboth, Mass. Police Chief Stephen Enos about Concealed Carry Permit holders attending Town Hall Meetings.  Nevermind that there is no law preventing them. Guess Enos will make up his own law.

I wonder if that is the same Enos from Dukes Of Hazard ?