I know a lot of people who prefer wheel guns for their simplicity. I don’t fault them that, use whatever gun(s) work for you. I personally like Revolvers for their strength. Try finding a semi-auto smaller than a Volkswagen that can shoot the S&W .500 Magnum.
Still I must say using them at the range they are rather simple to operate, but taking them apart is something different. I still remember detail stripping my 1911 on a whim, I did it with nothing but a screwdriver a toothpick (In pace of a brass punch) and a plastic hammer.
This is a LOT different! And again, the ONLY gun I’ve bought new is my S&W 642 no-lock. S&W needs to understand that nobody wants that lock noise on their guns!!
I’ve known of Eric Shelton for a while now, mostly following him on youtube. I’ve known he’s done a podcast for a little bit now, but I haven’t really bothered to listen to it.
Boy I was stupid really good show he runs. Also I won’t lie, I got hooked because he too jumped on the “Mess with Joan Peterson” bandwagon, its too much fun. Still I really enjoy podcasts for quiet weekends as News Radio is dead slow and for some reason I sometimes just prefer listening to the spoken word over music.
I hear a lot of people looking at getting a gun for XY or Z purpose, and limiting their budget to New Gun MSRPs.
People, GUNS ARE FOREVER!!! Why pay the cost of being the first owner? First up, I’d say there are checklists to buying used guns. If you’re buying a Revolver this is a VERY good Checklist. Xavier has a nice checklist for 1911s. Note that Xavier not only carries and shoots 1911s, but he collects them. Any of the above guns if you want a carry or a gun you’ll be shooting heavily, stay clear of collectors guns as you’ll be paying money for a market you’re not getting into.
But overall when buying a used gun don’t be afraid. First up your best bet will be to drag a seasoned gunnie along, somebody who has a few guns and knows how the gun you’re interested should look and feel. That not available buy from a gunshop, you may pay a small premium for having a shopkeeper and a storefront, but most shops have return policies, so worst case scenario, you run a few boxes of ammo through the gun, you just give it back and either trade for another, or move to a new shop. Always check with the shop keeper BEFORE buying of course.
-Know how your perspective gun works. Is is single-action? Double action? What are the safety features? Has the gun been modified? A cool cheat for this is ask if the shop has a brand new model you can handle. Handle the two side-by-side, see if the new gun actually feels any better/worse.
-Check your gun’s fit. A revolver, check the cylinder fit, does it wobble? Check frame-to-slide fit of a semi-auto, check the fit of the barrel to the slide. Again check to see if the trigger has a clean travel and break, and doesn’t have much movement outside of the action travel (AKA a 1911 trigger shouldn’t wobble around in its track, it should just move back-and-forth, a revolver trigger should only swing in a rearward arc, not flop side-to-side) again you can check this to a new gun. As a general rule the new gun will feel tighter….but will it feel, say, $200 tighter?
-Know some basic gunsmithing fixes. Some things you can do on your own, like swapping the grips or basic parts of a 1911. I your gun has a HORRIBLE trigger pull that CAN be fixed for not a lot of money, this may make the savings worth it. But things like barrel fit, or frame fit, or serious rust of damage may be difficult to fix, and it might be good to pass on that gun.
-Holster Wear is your friend. Some of the biggest diamonds in the rough are guns that were lugged around in a holster by somebody, but not shot much. A revolver with some scratches or scuffs that still locks up tight, or a semi-auto with thin patches in the finish or minor nicks, but solid fitting and inside the slide still looks pretty fresh are NICE used guns to buy, as nobody will try to pass them off as “Like New in Box” but if you aren’t looking for a beauty queen, it’ll run as well as the minty gun. Tho remember, the finish is there for a reason, bluing or various powder or oxidie coats are there to protect your gun from rust. Minot wear is to be expected. Huge patches of bare metal might be an issue. Tho remember stainless overall holds up to the elements well if properly cared for, and some modern semi-autos and revolvers are made of stainless but then coated with a finish for aesthetics. A scuff in say a S&W M&P’s stainless slide really won’t be anything but an eyesore, but will mean the shop keeper will charge less than a gun that looks perfect.
-If the shop has a shooting range ask to shoot it first. If the gun runs like a champ what do you have to complain about? BUY IT!
I own a BUNCH of guns, so far only one of them did I buy new, and that was my S&W642 no-lock. I bought this gun new for two reasons. #1. I was in the market for a 642, and the price was right. #2. S&W has a horrible habit of putting key locks in their guns, and I decided to tell them with my wallet that I appreciate revolvers sans lock.
Go buy a used gun, and then shoot the crap out of it!
Wow, those guys kick the CRAP out of those cheap guns in a country-fried fashion….and the guns live!
They have some jams, and the overall fit-finish-and quality of hi-points are TERRIBLE! But man I’m impressed they still run.
I would still say there are all sorts of guns you can get for not a lot more money that are a WHOLE lot better. I would say if you’re not made of money you might want to look into Police Trade-in guns. Guns like Glocks of just about every cambering and flavor, Various Sig Sauers, Beretta 92s (Overall I think the Beretta is a big bulky gun for what you get…but compared to a 9mm Hi-point, its svelte), S&Ws. Also there are C&R Surplus guns for cheap that are pretty awesome. Makarovs, CZ-82s, The Polish P64 (which may be my next gun buy, I shot one at the Blog Shoot, and its a REALLY neat little gun! that’s almost, but not quite a Walther PPK in 9x18mm)….heck there are even H&K guns out there for short money.
All that being said, if any of those guns above aren’t available to you or affordable to you (A NEW hi-point might be only a a few dollars cheaper than a USED Police Trade-in Glock 22, or a CZ-82…but a USED Hi-Point is is probably cheaper than most H&K Magazines! And I bet used Hi-points are easy to find, as they are crummy guns that are easy to trade-up on) I Hi-Point WILL work in a pinch it seems!
Again let’s concentrate on tools like guns, and ignore the root cause of violence. Works good!
FREMONT — Police are investigating the city’s fourth homicide in the past two months after a 22-year-old Newark man was killed early Sunday morning near Olive Street and Thornton Avenue, Cmdr. Bob Douglas said.
Abdul Mubeen Babacarhail was rushed to Eden Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, Douglas said.
Officers were called to the intersection about 2:03 a.m. amid reports of a loud group disturbance.
Officers arrived to find Babacarhail and a 25-year-old Hayward man suffering from stab wounds, Douglas said.
The 25-year-old is recovering from his wounds and has been contacted by Newark detectives, Douglas said.
Douglas had no information on how many times the victims were stabbed or if the attacks were gang-related.
The story also mentions a gang death that was a shooting. So if a gang member shoots you, are you any more dead if one stabs you?
Linoge has a great post about how the Brady Campaign picks meaningless metrics to make their failed agendas look far more successful than they really are. This lead me to think about my thoughts back when I was anti gun. As I said on BB&Guns I grew up in an area with virtually no gun culture, so my knowledge of guns was limeted to Hollywood, and the Main Stream Media, which in the early 90s was essentially a mouthpiece for the Brady Campaign.
First up, thanks to the hard work of the Brady Campaign and the Joyce Foundation I bought the line that “Assault Weapons” were in-fact “Machine Guns”. This also fit very well into my idea that anybody could walk into a gun shop anywhere in the country and walk out with a full-auto military weapon.
Classic Hollywood scene, and total bullshit. First up when you see The T-800 doing its thing he’s shooting full-auto. The IMFDB page cites Cameron saying some noise about the Terminator modifying the guns to full auto, which sounds a little goofy. I guess you could argue he’s an advanced machine from the future…so why didn’t he just mill a gun himself?
Still, that Uzi he gets? Totally an NFA Short Barreled rifle, even if it is in semi-auto.
Also in Movies and video games, its not like they EVER give a character a semi-auto version of a gun that exists in full-auto. This is the same reason why women in films are either very fit and good looking, or ugly. Hollywood is about excess and fantasy, so there is no value in going off half-cocked. Also video games are all about escapism, so just like the latest Need for Speed won’t include the baseline V6 Mustang that is affordable and good on gas mileage, or the Ford Fusion which is one of the best selling cars in America. People don’t want to drive the car they drive to work in a video game, they want the Cobra GT500 Mustang that costs more than they could ever afford and eats copious amounts of Premium gas! Same reason why you’ll never see a FPS where the shooter gets a Colt AR-15 sporter rifle, or an Uzi Carbine with a 16 barrel.
Another confusing point for me was what was all this “Semi-auto” vs. “Full-auto”. After hearing one of the talking-head discussions on the news, the NRA rep cleared things up for me that “Full-Auto” was what machine guns did, but still what was the “semi” part? I asked my Dad…he had NO idea. I had just recently watched Robocop:
In this film Robocop uses an “Auto-Nine” pistol, which is in fact a modified Beretta 93R Sub-Machinegun that fires 3-round bursts. “Burstfire” is a term I only recently learned, and isn’t often spoken about in general gunnie talk, and often only in deep technical G33kery, so I assumed if Full-auto would fire until the trigger was released, shooting a short burst with each trigger pull must be “Semi-Auto”. I’m not alone in this misconception, as my 17 year-old Nephew expressed the same assumption to me when talking guns this summer.
Another HUGE assumption I made was the power level of guns. Again, given that I was a teen in the early 90s most of my gun knowledge was around the pending “Assault Weapon Ban” that graced the news nearly nightly. There would be somebody advocating that their gun that was proposed to be banned was their hunting and sporting gun. It was always interesting that the gun owner was usually wearing camouflage, bearded, and either overweight, or RAIL thin. And as far as my memory goes the rail thin guy ALWAYS had a pony tail. On the other side of the split-screen was the gun control advocate, who was wearing a suit and tie, and generally had a mahogany bookcase behind him.
I got the impression that the rounds fired by these guns (.223 Remington, and 7.62x39mm) were VERY powerful, and certainly unreasonable compared to the common “Sporting Rounds” that I’d hear Maine deer hunters talk about, like .30-06 Springfield.308 Winchester or 12 gauge shotgun. Also there’s the whole .45 ACP vs. 9x19mm nonsense.
And of course there’s the whole “Private citizens rarely use guns in self Defense”, and you are 5,280x more likely to shoot a family member than an attacker, stuff.
As I’ve said before after I shot my first gun, I wanted to buy one, but being a college student didn’t have ANY disposable income, so being a geek I READ about guns. Here’s some of the important things I learned.
-I learned what the NFA was, and what it took to buy the various guns classified as NFA. I also learned what somebody actually NEEDS to do to buy a gun in a shop everywhere in this nation.
-I learned what Semi-auto means. Its a simple concept, but without that you can really be lead by the nose.
– I learned how stupid the Assault Weapons Ban really was:
I could geek out on the stupidity of this ban, but this video says it all.
-I learned about ballistics. Just the basic concept of bullet weight and muzzle velocity goes a LONG way in comparing various guns with power. Of course the rabbit hole of ballistics (internal, external, and terminal, as well as things like bullet construction, rate of spin) goes very deep, but simply knowing that a .223 Remington commonly has a 55 Grain bullet that goes around 3,000 FPS, generating about 1,300 Ft/lbs of muzzle energy, while a 150 grain .308 Winchester bullet is going almost that fast, but runs about 2,500 ft/lbs of energy, you can get an idea that if somebody shoot a deer with an AR-15 in .223 Rem, vs a Winchester Model 70 in .308, one might worry that the .223 is UNDER-powered, not the other way around.
-And of course there is work by Professor Gary Kleck as well as looking at FBI crime data quickly lead me to believe that not only are defensive guns used quite often, but that they are often rarely shot in the altercations. This of course suddenly makes people with carry permits look a LOT less paranoid than the anti-gun me has assumed.
I’ll finally end on a quote which sums up the anti-gun side to a T!
“Assault weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons –anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun– can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”
That first shot is IMPRESSIVE. She’s a small-framed lady, and wearing jeans and a tank top like that and concealing her gun so well! That is an impressive holster.
Also let’s just take advantage of the natural instincts. She’s a good looking woman, I know I thought it, and you gentlemen (and maybe some ladies) thought it too. This right here shows that a woman doesn’t need to make major sacrifices in fashion to carry on-body concealed.
I’m really enjoying the videos she puts out. Go see her channel here.
Also I’m happy to see more and more women of all ages taking interest in the shooting sports and self-defense.
Last time I was at the gun shop I saw a woman in her 20s picking out a similar Ruger LCR, and she seemed very excited about it. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw her enthusiasm.
This is why we win, expanding your rights makes you feel GOOD, as opposed to those who seek to take rights away, who are by nature unhappy and anti-social people.
Most Gang members a prohibited from owning firearms because of their long criminal history. That makes us all safe, Right?
Fort Bragg police are investigating a suspected gang-related stabbing that resulted in a boy being hospitalized with a collapsed lung….The victim said he could not identify his attacker other than to say he was with three other males wearing black clothing.
Even if you successfully ban guns, but do nothing about the root of violent crime, this is what you get!
Also I used this as an excuse to take a picture with my Droid 2 phone in darkness. all the exposure light is from the phone’s flash. REALLY bright, and also knocked my battery down about 10% for about 5 photos.
Still this is a VERY nice little camera, attached to a VERY nice pocket computer…attached to a kinda lame phone…but who do I want to talk to?
