ammomanufacturing-blog

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On AKizing the AR

This is a comment response to this: http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/05/09/ak-47-safety-selector-lever-ar-15/ it seemed too good to waste.

Next thing you know they'll have trigger packs that integrate AK trigger slap, and delete that pesky bolt-hold-open device that's been the biggest stumbling block for AK operators who are used to hearing a loud "click" when the gun is out of ammo, and instead go into remedial action drills to clear the AR they believe to be jammed, when in reality it's out of ammo. Lets not even get started on them not being able to figure out how to drop a locked-open bolt, and resorting instead to smacking it butt first on the ground to bring the rifle back into battery.

While they're at it, they should probably delete the dust-cover, and open up a large slot on the side of the upper receiver so a large reciprocating charging handle can be fitted to the right side of the AR-15 carrier.

As a final gasp, they might delete that difficult to use peep and post sight common to most US arms since WW2, replacing it with the tried and true speed and precision of V-notches cut with a triangular file into some investment cast steel. Having a windage adjustment is pointless on an AK because it's large bullets don't deflect sufficiently in the wind, and so will the new supremacy of an AR redesigned with a peasant aesthetic take on mythical status of the gun that won't jam and is the best battle implement ever created, regardless of what George Patton said about the M1 Garande, it's just too bad he never saw the AK-47.

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Sometimes people pay me to do this.

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WIP round 2

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Works in progress.

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Boy, this is even faster than the old bullet button. I wonder if our friend “30 magazine clip per second” has seen this and cried himself to sleep yet.

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A post shared by The Calloused Life (@thecallousedlife)

Say what…? CA folks are gonna love this. - @Regrann from @lantac_usa - California…. Start Tagging your gun people….. Coming soon #LanTac #LanTacRaven #magazine #reload #California #CA #sickguns #gunsdaily #ar15news #2a #calguns - #regrann

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300 BLK - Still a good idea?

One of the things I’ve grappled with since the introduction of cartridges such as the .300BLK (and to an extent the .458 SOCOM) is what the point of the exercise was. Both of these calibers are legal to hunt with in all 50 states (whether the rifle is legal is another matter). However, is a bullet with similar energy to a .44mag necessarily better when fired through a suppressor?

The .300BLK (I may harp on the .458 later) is a specialist cartridge, it’s supposed to do one thing, and one thing really well: run through suppressors with a low noise signature. And for this, it works. But that’s really all it does well.

A 220gr at <1080FPS (speed of sound) is relatively quiet when the bullet flies by the target, however the selection of a heavy-for-caliber bullet (220gr .308 bullet) means bullet stability is always going to be at question, even though .300BLK guns are offered in a 1 in 6 twist, some of the stability formulas out there predict as fast as a 1 in 4.

The other thing is, subsonic ammo is expensive, and everyone wants to shoot cheap stuff. Why did you buy/build a .300?

The biggest issue is the dangerous incompatibility between .223 and .300BLK. I’ve both heard, and seen more than a few reports of people blowing their expensive rifles apart (no serious injuries that I’ve seen yet), by ignoring what kind of ammo was either in the magazine, (mix of .223 and .300blk) or simply grabbing the wrong mag.

In many cases, I would surmise this was sloppiness on the part of the operator, even though if you ask them about it, “one of my friends was loading mags for me”.

This one issue, has really kept .300BLK out of my gun closet, I’ve been thinking recently about buying/building a new rifle, and just kinda “want something different”. Until I’ve got the funds to buy a Mk 20, I may just mull this over in my head, but I’m not beating down the door to get a Black Out.

It was fantastic marketing on the part of AAC, I’m just not sure it’s going to remain something people “just need to have”.

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And yes there are already "numerous" regulations on guns. But something being "numerous" is vague and a cop out. Are the regulations effective? Founded in facts and not political talking points? If not, I support removing them. But when other stable, developed, modern countries that have plenty of guns have far less gun crimes and gun related homicides, it's logical to see we may have room for improvement.

Uuuuggghh…

I had a late night band practice, have been looking after my infant son this morning, and haven’t had coffee yet.  But fine.  Let’s do this.

Are the regulations effective?

No.  They are not.  Because gun control is ineffective.  This has been my point the entire time.

Founded in facts and not political talking points?

No.  Because a vast majority of anti-gunners, both in America and outside, do not care for facts.  If they did, they would realize that gun control does not make societies safer as a whole.  It completely fails at achieving its overall goal.

I keep hearing people say that we won’t try gun control simply because gun owners are ignorant and love their guns more than human life.

It’s bullshit.

The fact is, WE HAVE TRIED STRICT NATIONAL GUN CONTROL.

Does the year 1994 or the name Clinton ring a bell to anyone?  Anyone?

From 1994 - 2004, there were strict national gun control laws in place in America.  They included most of the laws that are being proposed now.  An “assault weapons” ban.  Magazine capacity limits.  All of that.

Guess what?

IT WAS A COMPLETE FAILURE.

But when other stable, developed, modern countries that have plenty of guns have far less gun crimes and gun related homicides, it’s logical to see we may have room for improvement.

Which countries might those be?

People have a habit of making the false assumption that stricter gun control results in lower violent crime and/or lower gun violence.  This assumption is simply not true.

Gun Related Deaths per 100,000

United States - 10.64

Countries With Strict Gun Control:

Mexico - 11.17

Argentina - 10.5

Brazil - 19.03

Colombia - 28.14

El Salvador - 46.85

Guatemala - 36.38

Honduras - 64.8

Jamaica - 39.74

South Africa - 21.51

Swaziland - 37.16

Venezuela - 50.90

Yep.  Nothing but rainbows and butterfly kisses in all of those countries.  Nothing bad every happens in those countries since they have strict gun control.

But, Johnny!  Those countries aren’t developed like America!  You need to compare us to other developed countries like Australia and The UK!  Gun control is clearly working for them!

Okay, let’s talk about those countries then.

Australia:

[this segment brought to you by lee-enfeel]

People die Australia as a result of firearms violence at almost the same rate they did prior to the firearms act, and some sources state that more than a quarter million illicit firearms exist in Australia currently.

The total firearms death rate in 1995 - the year before the massacre and the laws introduced - was 2.6 per 100,000 people. The total firearms murder rate that year was 0.3/100,000. From 1980-1995, Australian firearms deaths dropped from 4.9/100,000-2.6/100,000 without the implementation of firearms laws. This is a rate of decline that has remained fairly constant; Looking at 1996-2014, in which the rate has dropped from 2.6-0.86, it shows that the decline has been slower in a longer period of time since the law’s passing. Likewise, homicides declined more quickly in the 15 years prior to the firearms laws (0.8-0.3) than in the 18 years since it (0.3-0.1). This just indicates that firearms deaths haven’t been noticeably affected by the legislation you’ve claimed has done so much to decrease gun crime.

It should also be noted that around the same time, New Zealand experienced a similar mass shooting, but did not change their existing firearms laws, which remain fairly lax; even more so than some American states like California, New York, or Connecticut. Despite this, their firearms crime rate has declined fairly steadily as well, and they haven’t experienced a mass shooting since.

The “Australia banned guns and now they’re fine” argument is really old and really poorly put together. Gun control is little more than a pink band-aid on the sucking chest wound that is America’s social and economic problems. It’s a ‘quick fix’ issue used by politicians to skirt around solving the roots of the violence problem in the United States, which are primarily poverty, lack of opportunities, and lack of education.

You could ban guns tomorrow nationwide and gun violence and overall violent crime would not be reduced at all.

[this segment brought to you by cerebralzero]

In 2005 the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn,[37] noted that the level of legal gun ownership in NSW increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had had little to no effect on violence

In 2006, the lack of a measurable effect from the 1996 firearms legislation was reported in the British Journal of Criminology. Using ARIMA analysis, Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran found no evidence for an impact of the laws on homicide.[40]

A study coauthored by Simon Chapman found declines in firearm‐related deaths before the law reforms accelerated after the reforms for total firearm deaths (p=0.04), firearm suicides (p=0.007) and firearm homicides (p=0.15), but not for the smallest category of unintentional firearm deaths, which increased.[43]

Subsequently, a study by McPhedran and Baker compared the incidence of mass shootings in Australia and New Zealand. Data were standardized to a rate per 100,000 people, to control for differences in population size between the countries and mass shootings before and after 1996/1997 were compared between countries. That study found that in the period 1980–1996, both countries experienced mass shootings. The rate did not differ significantly between countries. Since 1996-1997, neither country has experienced a mass shooting event despite the continued availability of semi-automatic long arms in New Zealand. The authors conclude that “the hypothesis that Australia’s prohibition of certain types of firearms explains the absence of mass shootings in that country since 1996 does not appear to be supported… if civilian access to certain types of firearms explained the occurrence of mass shootings in Australia (and conversely, if prohibiting such firearms explains the absence of mass shootings), then New Zealand (a country that still allows the ownership of such firearms) would have continued to experience mass shooting events.”[44]

WOW: New Report Reveals Just How Badly Australia’s Gun Ban Failed…

TEAM CROWDERFRIDAY SEPTEMBER 16 2016

Remember Australia’s gun buyback confiscation program? It received more undeserved, emptypraise than Lena Dunham’s underwear selfies. Said praise is mostly coming from Americanliberals, mind you (see Obama Praises Australia’s Gun Ban. The Actual Results…). The funnything about that? American leftists don’t live in Australia, so they don’t see the results of thegun ban (or they do, and don’t give two craps about “results). Lucky for us, there’s reports thattell us what happened, like this one. Turns out gun control? Not looking so good…

Despite Australia’s strict gun control regime, criminals are now better armed than at any timesince then-Prime Minister John Howard introduced a nationwide firearm buyback scheme inresponse to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Shootings have become almost a weeklyoccurrence, with more than 125 people, mostly young men, wounded in the past five years.Got that? Emphasis added. For the anti-gun leftist ninnies who pretend to care about peopledying.

…More people have been seriously maimed in the recent spate of shootings and reprisals.Crimes associated with firearm possession have also more than doubled… The violence reacheda fever pitch in March, when there were two shootings a day for a week.The investigation has found:

There have been at least 99 shootings in the past 20 months – more than one incident aweek since January 2015

Known criminals were caught with firearms 755 times last year, compared to 143 timesin 2011

Assault rifles and handguns smuggled into Australia via shipments of electronics andmetal parts

Behold, a chart:

Yikes. Seems rather a dramatic spike, yes?

So here’s the thing about gun control: it’s supposed to make gun crime go down, right? Youknow, as in not up. Looking at these numbers, I’d say that the whole “no guns” thing backfired…The worst part? Australian politicians tout gun control as an achievement… Meanwhile there’smore guns in the hands of criminals than ever, and law abiding Australians can’t even legallydefend themselves.

We’ve known that Australia’s gun control is a big bucket of suck for a while now (see Australia’sGun Ban Results in More Guns Than Ever… New Findings.). But this adds confirmation guncontrol doesn’t make people safer. In most instances, it makes people less safe. Hence themajor increase in gun-related crimes. This research details the extent of Australian gun policy’scrappage. These are numbers you can use to melt the faces off your liberal friends when theytry to tell you we need gun control in the US (see GUN WIN: Missouri Eliminates

Unconstitutional Concealed Carry Requirements.). Because no thanks, we’ll keep our SecondAmendment. Have fun with those 755 armed criminals, Australia.

We see the same trend of failure in England…

And Ireland…

And on and on.  Gun control simply does not make society safer as a whole.

Now let’s get back to America.

The number of guns in The United States has increased by 62% from 1993 to 2010.  Currently figures show that this increase has continued and that number has risen to about 370 Million.

Gun control advocates would have you believe that with more guns comes more violence and crime.  This, in reality, is simply not true.  If more guns lead to more violence and crime, we would see violence and crime rates rising with gun ownership.  That is not at all what is happening.

From 1993 to 2010, gun murders were cut in half.  In fact, they have continued to drop since and we are currently at a 30 year low.  Overall murder, violent crime, and gun violence rates have also followed the same trend despite gun ownership increasing.

In simple terms:  More Guns, Less Crime.

Chances of being shot or killed based on firearm deaths and population count:

Death by gun, suicide excluded:0.0032%

Death by gun, suicide included:0.0095%

Death in a mass shooting alone:0.000032%

Injury by gun, no death:0.024%

Death of injury by gun including suicide:0.033%

Gun deaths and injuries etc based off general stats used by anti gun people, rather than exact numbers from each year because its faster and easier to do. Going by exact yearly figures would result in very little change to the average numbers used above.

Guns compared to other ways you can die:

Unintentional fall deaths:

Number of deaths: 26,009

Deaths per 100,000 population: 8.4

Motor vehicle traffic deaths:

Number of deaths: 33,687

Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.9

Unintentional poisoning deaths:

Number of deaths: 33,041

Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.7

All poisoning deaths:

Number of deaths: 42,917

Deaths per 100,000 population: 13.9

All Drug poisoning deaths:

Deaths per 100,000 population: 12.4 (2010)

All firearm deaths (suicide included):

Number of deaths: 31,672

Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.3

All firearms deaths (suicide excluded):

Number of deaths: 12,664

Deaths per 100,000 population: 3.6

Firearm deaths broken down completely:

3.6 for homicide 6.3 for suicide0.30 for unintentional 0.10 undetermined

10.3 for deaths total in general of 3.6 for homicide only. You are more likely to trip and die than be killed by a gun.

But what about those scary ASSAULT RIFLES???  We at least need to ban those, RIGHT???

According to the FBI, about 250 people were murdered with rifles in 2014. Not just those evil “military rifles”. ALL rifles. This means that this includes grandpa’s old hunting rifles as well. On a side note here, it should also be noted that the state with the most rifle murders was California, a state that already has highly restrictive laws when it comes to so called “assault rifles”.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-20

The US population was 317.8 MILLION people at the beginning of 2014, 318.8 MILLION people in June of 2014, and 320.2 MILLION by the end of 2014. If we take the average of these numbers, we get 318.9 MILLION people in 2014.

http://www.census.gov/popclock/

So about 250 rifle murders versus about 318,900,000 people.

This means that less than 0.00008% of the people in America are actually killed with so called “military style” rifles.

In 2012, Slate.com crunched numbers from a variety of manufacturers, as well as federal statistics on background checks, and extrapolated that nearly 3.3 MILLION AR-15 rifles were in the country, but that was before calls for renewed bans, which drove sales through the roof.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/20/assault_rifle_stats_how_many_assault_rifles_are_there_in_america.html

So we are now years later, the popularity of these so called “military style” rifles has only continued to grow, and gun sales have been through the roof from 2012 to current day, but I digress.

Even if we take a huge stretch and assume that all 250 of those rifle murders were committed with AR-15 rifles and that there were only 3.3 MILLION of these rifles in circulation in 2014, this would still mean that less than 0.008% of those big scary AR-15 rifles are being used for murder.

According to CDC death statistics, you are literally well over 121 times more likely to be killed by falling than you are by being murdered with an AR-15 rifle.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf

So knock it off with weapons bullshit already.

With that being said, anon is going off for a while.  If you’re going to continue to insist on being a dense fool, you’ll have to show your face to do so.

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This is my other blog, which is kinda the one I’m most active on at the moment.

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Mike Rowe is a National Treasure

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SHOT 2017 In Brief

NSSF SHOT show is always a flurry of activity, part stress, part marathon, part carnival ride. For the most part, as my business expands, I get less and less time to enjoy the carnival ride, and have to spend more time on the stress and marathon parts.

This year, I really cut back, I wasn’t presenting anything new at the show, and I had scheduled most of my meetings early in the week, and I was planning to leave early.

I had to be in town on Sunday to be at ATAC early on Monday morning, I really wish I could share more of what I did there in pictures and video, however neither are really allowed there, and reading first-hand accounts of shooting all variety of sniper rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, etc is really done best with video.

A couple of high points:

Here I am rocking an FN-SCAR MK20 SSR, the FN rep said they should start shipping these to civilian customers soon. I want one, I doubt I could afford 2. As you can see from the picture, I’m a damn large guy, and even I thought this gun was a touch heavy, either way, it’s dead sexy.

Speaking of heavy, here’s an FN Mk 19 grenade launcher. There was a spirited discussion about the man portability of this 78lb crew served beast. I think we eventually agreed it just wasn’t practical for a host of reasons.

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It’s still an AR, but at least it’s a creative rethinking of the whole thing.

Adam Jensen called, he wants his carbine back.

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Photo Tour of the Hawthorne NV Ordnance Museum

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Trust, But Verify

The more they reassure you the power is not live, the more you should verify what they are saying is true.

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Youtube Ammo Channel?

Was talking to the wife last night, she suggested I do a youtube channel talking about ammo after I was sitting there picking apart some of the new “Winchester Forged” 9mm ammo. (I’m working on a write-up, but need to do photos and shoot some first)

Is this something you might be interested in?

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Interesting... what is this? it looks like a CZ-805 with a stock from an FN-SCAR

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I don’t understand AR-15′s anymore

So earlier today, one of the mailing lists I’m on, someone posted the “Geissele Reaction-Rod” and asked if anyone wanted to go in on buying one. I’ve been around the AR-15 platform for more than 20 years, I’ve designed accessories for them, and I even designed a custom upper/lower for one customer.

Looking at online photos of the “reaction rod”, I had no idea what it did. Granted, part of this was because I had no idea how big it was. Did it go into the bolt-carrier to clean out carbon? seems a bit expensive. Well, after looking at a few photos on google, oh, it slides into the barrel extension, and aligns the upper-receiver.

And then I had to stop and wonder why anyone would spend $100 on a tool that would do this.

Asking this question elicited a slew of responses, none of which really answered my question, positing everything from proper alignment of the barrel and upper, to installing muzzle devices, to quad-free-float-rails etc. I can’t really sum up everything in a way that doesn’t sound dismissive.

In part, there is some latent frustration that I’ve been suppressing for a few weeks that’s about to spew out, and I will probably be fouling a few bowls of cheerios, but here’s an itemized rant of what I “don’t get”.

BUIS - (Back up Iron Sights) mounted to a free float rail. This might look cool, and all tactical and stuff. But it doesn’t work. Barrels and free float tubes are free to point in any direction they so choose. This is why it’s called a free-float barrel. Misalignment between the FFT and barrel will also be exaggerated by uneven heating of the rail when the gun is fired (heat rises, heating the top of the rail, which expands changing POI)

Free-Float Handguards - FFH/FFT’s took off back in the day with open-class service rifle shooters. This allowed a decent accuracy gain when combined with receiver mounted optics as it meant the sling tension common to competitive target shooting was no longer put on the barrel. Here’s an example:

Credit: https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2015/9/17/match-versus-service-rifle-which-is-best-for-you/

The big problem with FFTs on “working guns” is you need to remove the front sight base/gas block to install them, and they also add some extra noise as the FFT will continue to “ring” some time after the shot is fired. This is more noticeable in many of the skelletonized tubes that have become common these days.

I get it, FFTs have their use, but I just don’t get it. 2-piece handguards are simpler to install. To an extent they remain indexed to the barrel, they are more resilient than FFTs, and the big one... it allows you to maintain the functionality of attaching grenade launchers, masterkeys, and other devices which really should be attached to the barrel nut to handle recoil. While this may seem obtuse to some, they’re largely personal preferences. I’ll save the rest of my rant for later.

As usual: Your mileage may vary.