Category Archives: ccw

Hiding your guns in plain sight

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There are an estimated 140 million guns in the US and it’s important for each of these to stay secure. Sure there are traditional gun safes, cabinets and racks, but many of these are obvious and easy to defeat by a skilled burglar. That’s why you can add an extra layer of protection to your gun collection by hiding them– often in plain sight.

We’ve all walked past those displays of refrigerator sized gun safes and marveled at the thickness of the walls, how heavy the doors are, and how many huge moving deadbolts the door secures with. The problem is, most of these safes are meant to protect the insides from fire and casual theft, not to stop an all-out assault on your firearm collection by someone who knows what they are doing.

In fact, most of your basic safes are so simple that a kid can pick them with household items in just a few minutes.

Beautiful glass gun cabinets are even easier to penetrate as most use only a simple cam-lock to close the doors and, of course, have large panels of very breakable glass.

The solution could be in some cover and concealment

behind painting

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com

Rock Island TAC 2011 VZ: 10mm 1911 Joy

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One of the most influential gunfight Jedi masters of modern history was Colonel Jeff Cooper. Cooper was known to believe that the Model 1911 handgun as invented by John Moses Browning was the combat handgun of its time. Further, the Colonel helped invent a super-fast round, the 10mm Auto, in which he placed a lot of trust. Well, an affordable10mm Model 1911 has finally come to us from the Philippines and it is the RIA TAC 2011 VZ.

Back in the 1980s, after a lifetime of shooting and instructing, Jeff Cooper designed what he felt to be a great round. A fan of the .45ACP (who isn’t?), he felt that the short and fat bullet could benefit from better ballistics. The maximum pressure for a .45ACP round is only about 21,000 psi to stay safe. With that in mind, he cut down the old 1900’s era .30 Remington rifle cartridge case to 25mm, added a 130-200 grain bullet to the top of it, and called it a day. Capable of operating at up to 37,000-psi worth of pressure, this cut down rifle round was smoking.

The result was the super-hot and fast 10mm Auto. It was so fast, in fact, that many shooters shied away from it due to recoil and perceived muzzle flip issues. In the end the round was ‘dumbed down’ and made not quite as spicy, which resulted in what we know today as the .40S&W.

Few guns in its time were chambered for the 10mm, notably the ill-fated Bren 10, the S&W 1006, and the Colt Delta Elite. The Elite was a standard Colt 1911 80 Series gun that was built from the ground-up to fire 10mm. It’s a beautiful thing, but being that it’s a Colt and its been made in very low numbers over the past twenty years, they usually run about $900 for a used one. If you can find a new one for less than a grand, you stumbled on a deal.

Thats where the RIA VZ 10mm comes in at…

rock-island-2011-tactical-series

Read the rest in my column at University of Guns.com

The ins and outs of Glock Magazines

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Since Gaston Glock came down from his Austrian hilltop and gave forth to the world his polymer framed joy in the 1980s, shooters have been looking for extra magazines for them. There are a few basic tips and tricks to these things so sit back and let us talk for a bit.

Always remember that caliber, not model number, drives Glock mag interchangeability. For instance, a 17-round magazine for a
G17 will also fit the smaller framed G19 and G26 as well as the tactical/practical G34. The only caveat to this rule is that mags made for short guns will not fit into full sized ones (i.e. a G26 mag won’t work in a G17) since they are too short to reach the chamber.

Then there is the generational divide. Many people think that older Gen 2 and 3 mags will not work in a Gen 4 gun of the same caliber. This is a mistake. A Gen 4 gun will take all older mags unless that gun was swapped over for a left-handed magazine release.

Glock mags are hard to wear out. I have had several 2nd Gen mags that are pushing 20 years old that haven’t suffered from worn out springs yet. However, I have had some go south in as little as five years of hard ware. The beauty is that this is usually fixed by replacing the spring. Factory OE springs run about 80-cents each while nicer Wolfe type run just a few cents more.

If you have mags, buy a pack of springs for later down the road. Better to have them and not need them than need them and
not have them….

Read the rest in my column at University of Guns.com

glock mags

The Case for Two 1911s

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If John Moses Browning’s Model handgun of 1911 is perhaps now an icon, would it be OK to have more than one? Does Sterling Archer own a turtleneck? Of course!

We give you the reasons why.

Read the rest in my column at Springfield Forum.com

two springfield 1911s

The SIG P227 A Bright New Star on the Horizon

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Each year gun makers try to introduce something new to keep their customers coming back for more. Many of these new guns are like incoming meteors in the sky, blazing across the horizon and attracting attention but soon disappearing and never heard from again. However, this year’s new SIG .45, the P227 seems to be much more than a piece of bright rock.

SIG, the Swiss based armaments firm that is today famous for its pistols, got into the handgun biz in the 1940s. They made the Swiss Army’s Model SP47/8 pistol just after World War 2. This gun, sold famously overseas as the SIG P210, is one of the most classic 9mm pistols in history. It was only replaced by a more modern double-action pistol, the Model P75 in the 1970s. This gun, sold overseas as the SIG P220, incorporated a locked breech short-recoil action with a fast and effective take down to make a pistol that was both reliable and easy to master. The P220 however was a single-stack magazine design. To garner more military and law enforcement sales with a higher capacity, the design was stretched in the early 1980s to make the P226 series pistol.

Able to carry a 15-shot 9mm magazine (or 13-shot in its later .40S&W half-brother); the P-226 became a fast favorite with operators of all sizes and backgrounds across the world. It was this gun, modified with a push-button mag release over its original heel-release, that would have won the US Army pistol trials in 1985 had its cost have been more on par with the Beretta Model 92. With a more flexible budget, elite units like the US Navy Seals adopted the P226 and have depended on it for years. The only gripe that users have ever complained about is that the gun just didn’t come in .45ACP.

That is, until 2013.

SIG_Sauer_P227_Nitron_45_ACP
Read the rest in my column at Universtiy of Guns

The PWS MK107 Piston AR Pistol

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Primary Weapons Systems, Inc. (PWS) of Boise Idaho has been in the high-performance AR biz for long enough to have some serious street cred. They are best known for their top shelf MK1 and MK2 series rifles and uppers in addition to their Triad series of flash suppressing compensators. Well PWS has now taken to making an AR-style pistol.

And its piston driven.

Wait, what?

Read the rest in my column at University of Guns

pws M107PA1B_L_1

Dolphin AR Fumble

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I’m a KC fan myself, but Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill’s deserves some press. You see his old lady Lauren recently rented a Nissan Rogue from Rent A Car then returned it two hours later as she apparently wasn’t feeling it.

lauren-ryan-tannehill-ar15-rifle

Well, she was in such a hurry that she forgot their legally owned AR-15  inside its nice tactical bag in the back of the car.

tannehill-ar15-325

The next driver called attention to it and the gun was handed over to the local LEO and later retrieved by the Tannerhills. Tannerhills AR is nicely tricked out with an EOTech reactive sight, Magpul furniture including a sweet AFG2 Angled Forend Grip, and a modular swift flip magnifier of unknown make.

He has good tastes.

The better 1880s mouse trap, just add revolver

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From time to time everyone has had experiences with unwanted pests and varmints of all kinds.

In 1882, in Fredonia, Texas, one very inventive homesteader by the name of James Alexander Williams decided to go to the next level in the war on vermin by bringing in the big guns.

Literally.

rat-exterminator
Read the rest in my column at Guns.com

Police Chief has accidental discharge with his Glock, Mayor blames the gun

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Connersville, Indiana is a small town of about 13,000 located in Fayette County, about 6o miles east of Indianapolis. Known as “Little Detroit” due to the large collection of automobile plants located in the town during the first half of the 20th Century, Connersville built many of the famous 1940s Willys Jeep bodies.

David Counceller, the chief of police, leads the police department of the town. A man with more than forty years of law enforcement background going back to the 1970s when he was a US Army MP, he is currently running for sheriff of Fayette County.

While stopped at a local gun shop to check out newer model Glocks, Counceller accidentally shot himself in the leg with his own….
Read the rest in my column at the Glock forum

glock sharmouth

Why do we love the 1911?

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Name a single mechanical contraption that has been around, essentially in its original format, for over a hundred years yet is today even more popular than ever. Further, it’s never been out of production and likely never will in the near future. If you are a gun person, the answer is easy: John Browning’s Colt Model 1911 semi-automatic pistol.

well used old 1911

John Moses Browning was the rock star of 1900s firearm design. Almost everything that left his drawing board became an instant hit. If it wasn’t for the designs he made for FN, Colt, Remington and Winchester, the entire look of firearms today would be very different. Of his 128 inventions, the Model 1911 is often touted as his most enduring.

It was born from Browning’s earlier work on his Model 1900 and 1903 series pistols for Colt and shows an internal similarity to those guns. However, they were chambered for much smaller cartridges. Colt wanted a .45ACP caliber semi-automatic pistol to compete for the US Army’s pistol trials in the early 1900s. The gun was a single-action only semi-automatic pistol fed from a 7-shot detachable box magazine that could be released with a push-button (most comparable designs of the day had a heel-release that needed both hands to operate), and had a sufficiently long sight radius to make it accurate even with simple fixed sights. It was heavy, at 39-ounces, and large, at 8.25-inches long, but it was rugged and worked well when needed.
Read the rest in my column at University of Guns

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