Gun Thread: Sooper Bowl Edition!

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Welp, tonight is the big game. Sometime during this thread approximately 37 hours of pre-game bullshit will end, and the actual game bullshit will begin. Are you watching? I must confess to having lost interest in the game in general and the players and league in particular about 30 years ago. I'm even past watching the game for the commercials, which frankly is akin to reading Playboy for the articles. To say I am profoundy uninterested in the personal opinions of the players and the corporate positions of the NFL is something of an understatement.

With that, let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

More Super Bowl Stuff
It occurs to me I may not have sufficiently made my point regarding the depths of hell to which I believe the game has devolved. Remember when the Super Bowl was Super? Remember when those who played the game were too? Names such as John Unitas and Dick Butkus serve as a stark reminder of what the game of football used to be, and it's players once were all about.

Depressing huh? Having said all that, it's A-OK if you would like to discuss the game tonight in the comments!

One of the reviews mentioned something I think is a good idea, and that is the practice of placing a strip of skateboard friction tape to the front strap. I have done this on several guns and even some match rifles, and with it in place, your hands and fingers will not slip. At all. Ever. It's not necessary with the rubbery Hogues, but keep it in mind if you have a grip that feels slippery. It's a weird trick!

Texas 3 Pack
Tonight we have not one, not two, but three range reports from the great state of Texas!

First up, our pal and TXMoMe co-host extraordinaire Rancher Bob. For those of you thinking RancherBob's skills might be limited to maintaining an exemplary attitude as horde of unruly Morons descend upon his beautiful ranch like a plague of locusts, think again. He is quite the shooter, too!

$2.97?!

Range report from the home of the Texas MOME!

Marlin 30-30, 336 C with micro groove rifling shooting hand loads at 100yrds using the IMR 4320 and Winchester 120 primers. The powder and primers are both from the 1960s. I've had one misfire out of 35 rounds. The primers were not in a sealed container. The one pound metal can of powder was still sealed. The bullets 170 grain Hornady flat nose. The aroma was perfect when I popped the metal seal out. I've reloaded all of my 30-30 with it about 230 cartridges and still enough to do another 10 or so shells. I used primers from the same era. I've shot about 20 with good results.

My first five rounds at 100 yards were 12 inches low and not much of a group, you can see the holes below the paper They are the ones without paint.

RancherBob adjusted the sights and got on the paper.

I think I will stick with closer shots. This is a 3 shot group at 50 yards. The lack of grouping at 100yds is the result of my eyes not being what they used to be!

Excellent report, RancherBob! Thank you! Very nice to know the powder and primers were still good after all these years!

Next up, our pal Eromero takes the delightful shootrix Mrs E to the range.

So Mrs. E was able to shoot on Wednesday at the brand new indoor range in our town. Family membership is $800 per year, it has six lanes and will allow rifles but no 50cal, and shotguns are slugs only. Any handgun except 50AE.

She loved the place and shot her carry Kimber Micro9 and her target special Glock 17, both at 7 yards which is average gunfight distance.

Kimber target

Glock target

She had not been a-shootin' in over 8 months. Her Kimber is a ShotShow Special only change is HiViz sights and a CT laser which she never turns on. Her Glock is a retired race gun which is highly customized. She had it on the table year before last TxMoMe and some morons got to shoot it. The 1K rds 9MM she ordered from SG arrived yesterday. Should keep her out of saloons for a while.

Thanks Eromero and very nice shooting Mrs. E!!

Rounding out the 3 pack is our pal Jim SND:

And so, I stuffed my range bag with my trusty S&W Model 28 Highway Patrolman (4" bbl., .357 Mag/.38 Special) revolver, along with my tried and true Browning Buckmark UDX Pro .22 LR, and a brand new Browning Buckmark UDX Camper .22 LR, which was a Christmas Gift from my employer. Had eye and ear protection, and cleaning products in the bag, as always.

My older Buckmark features a forged steel barrel, and the finger grooves are integral to the frame. The new Buckmark Camper has the feature distinctive to the "Camper" series, that being a small diameter steel "tube" barrel, with a (appx.) 1" diameter aluminum "outer barrel" swaged onto the inner steel barrel. This gives it a Bull Barrel appearance, while actually being a bit lighter than the older Buckmark's forged steel, slab sided barrel. The Camper also has a straight frontstrap on the frame, with the finger grooves being added by the contoured polymer grip. This also results in a slightly larger overall front-to-back grip dimension.

On to the target. I started with the S&W, firing 25 rounds of WW SuperX .38 Special, 148 gr. wadcutters. Double action shooting, as a warmup. That's obviously, the upper-right group on the target. Next was the vintage Buckmark, with 10 rounds (one full magazine) each, of Winchester Super X .22LR High Velocity (40gr), and Federal Gold Match .22LR (40gr). The Super X projectile was plain, lubed lead, while the Federal rounds featured copper-washed projectiles.

Upper left-side target was the two magazines of both varieties, fired in succession. Rate of fire, slightly faster than one round per second. Then, my phone rang, and I learned that my passengers flight had landed a bit early, so I knew I had about 30 minutes till they were out of baggage claim. With that in mind, I took up the new "Camper", and fired 20 rounds of each ammo, but this time with the RSO's permission, stepping up the rate to faster... between 2 and 3 rounds per second.

Results, on the lower left, the Federal Gold Match. Lower right, the Winchester Super X.

After the 3rd round of the Federal, I experienced a Failure to Extract, but a single drop of oil on the hinge-pin of the claw extractor solved that problem. I had lubed the slide rails prior to shooting, but had neglected to oil the slide internals. Oops!

Beginning to end, I was at the range for a total of 25 minutes. Still, some practice is always better than no practice! And, I made it on-time to pick up my passengers at arrivals, too!

Great report! Nice shooting and congratulations on the new pistol, Jim SND!!

Need to up your game? Just do what this guy does.

Ammo Update
Here's a quick ammo update from about a week ago.

I get the general sense that supply continues to improve but prices remain steep. What are all y'all seeing?

Gun Basics 101
The She Equips Herself girl is back this week, this time on concealed baby carrying:

The COHIBA Majestuosos 1966 is not quite my daily smoke yet, but you do know how fond I am of the Robusto!

Link-O-Rama

I'm really very seriously not kidding around anymore. Buy Ammo
AmmoSeek - online ammo search tool
GunBot - online ammo search tool
SG Ammo
Palmetto State Armory
Georgia Arms
AmmoMan
Target Sports USA
Bud's Gun Shop

This week's gun funny comes to us courtesy of our pal and all 'round nice guy, Hrothgar

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That's it for this week - have you been to the range?

posted by Weasel at 07:00 PM

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