Category Archives: ccw

10 things you may not know about Glock

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Sure, you carry and love your polymer framed G-gun often and love taking it to the range. While you may know the firearm inside and out, there may be some trivia about Glocks themselves that you may not know.

We decided to bring ten little known tidbits about yours and ours favorite modern safe action pistol out in public. Many of these factoids grace the page of Paul Barrett’s landmark work on the gun and its inventor, Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, published in 2012.

glock assembly gif

Without further delay:

1. When designing his first handgun, Mr. Glock carried around a Walther P-38 military pistol in his pants pocket for two weeks. This led to his guns to have a minimum of surface controls since he could not remember whether he had the DA/SA Walther on ‘safe’ or not.

2. Glock had been invited to send his gun to the US Army pistol trials in 1984 to compete against Colt, S&W, SIG, and others for the US military’s next service pistol to replace the venerable Colt 1911. Glock declined because he could not come up with 35 test guns to meet the specs in time for the trails. The Beretta Model 92, as the M9 pistol, was adopted after these trials and is the standard issue handgun to the military today.

3. Gaston Glock is a naturalist and enjoys taking vigorous morning swims, sans suit. This often happens in the near frozen lakes in Austria around his home where Jack Frost is known to bite more than your nose.

4. Glock’s first products for the Austrian military were survival knives, not guns.

5. The Glock 17, the first successful polymer framed pistol, was designed by Gaston Glock between 1980 and 1982. The name of Glock’s pistol comes not from it’s 17-round magazine capacity but from being Gaston Glock’s 17th patented invention. His previous inventions range from kitchen equipment to improvements on curtain rods.
Read the rest in my column at Glock Forum.com

The Walther P38: Godfather of the modern combat handgun

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When you think German Army pistol, the Luger comes to mind. The thing is, the Germans themselves wanted something better and came up with one of the great-unsung handguns of all time. You may call it the Walther P38 and its influence has been felt far and wide.

In the 1930s, the German military was quietly rebuilding. Even before Hitler came to power, the tiny Reichswehr had done extensive research into rearming their nation with the most modern of equipment. After Hitler came to power, this process got louder. One of the things the army wanted was a new handgun to replace the 1900-vintage Luger. While the Luger was a beautiful weapon, its toggle-action was prone to clogging, especially when dirty. It was also expensive, and every army in history had a budget.

Carl Walther, an up and coming firearms manufacturer who had just won a contract to supply his innovative PP and PPK pistols to the German police, threw a design from his workshop into the ring.

canadian soldier checking out a captured P38 during WWII
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

Smith and Wesson 4500 Series Pistols: The pure 90s cop special

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In a world filled with super-high capacity ‘wondernines‘, Smith and Wesson found a remarkable level of success in the 1990s with a design that kept it old school. Let’s kick it for a minute with the Smith and Wesson 4500 series.

In 1984 there were three choices in police handguns. The go-to guns of that time were the wondernines: double-stacked pistols such as the Glock 17, Ruger P-85, Beretta 92, S&W 5906, and others. Also popular were the slower to reload, but no less accurate six-shoot revolvers like the Colt Python and Ruger GP100. You could also choose the old fashioned Colt 1911 single stack .45ACP if you wanted more firepower, but this single-action gun, and when carried ‘cocked and locked’ was not popular with administrators.

Smith and Wesson, the first US company to mass-produce a 9mm in the country, had been looking to capitalize on a larger-framed automatic that used the same styling and action of its popular 5906 pistol. Since the 10mm Auto chambered Model 1006 would not reach maturity until 1990, the .45ACP seemed to be the next best thing.  At the same time, they were developing the Model 4006, which used their new .40S&W round–itself a weakly loaded 10mm Auto. Needing a modern combat handgun right away, that didn’t fire the ‘underpowered’ 9mm or the unproven 10mm/.40S&W; they developed their first .45ACP autoloader.

sw_4500_series-1024x768

Read the rest in my column at Guns.com

Think you are cold today?

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The US Navy attack submarine USS Annapolis (SSN 760) rests in the Arctic Ocean after surfacing through three feet of ice during Ice Exercise 2009 on March 21, 2009. The two-week training exercise, which is used to test submarine operability andwar-fighting capability in Arctic conditions, also involved the USS Helena (SSN 725), the University of Washington and personnel from the Navy Arctic Submarine Laboratory.

DoD photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Tiffini M. Jones, U.S. Navy. (Released)

DoD photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Tiffini M. Jones, U.S. Navy. (Released). Click to go bigga.

Commisoned in 1992 the Annapolis is an improved Los Angeles class attack submarine. Homeported in Groton, CT, she is assigned to Submarine Development Squadron 12.
Specs;
Displacement:     6,000 long tons (6,096 t) light (surfaced)
6,927 long tons (7,038 t) full (dived)
927 long tons (942 t) dead
Length:     110.34 m (362 ft 0 in)
Beam:     10.06 m (33 ft 0 in)
Draft:     9.75 m (32 ft 0 in)
Depth:     122 m (400 ft)
Propulsion:     S6G nuclear reactor
Speed:     25 knots (46 km/h; 29 mph)+
Complement:     12 officers, 115 men
Sensors and
processing systems:     BQQ-10 Sonar; BPS-15 Surface Search Radar;
Armament:     • 4 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
• 12 x Vertical Launch Tomahawk tubes
• Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes
• Tomahawk missiles
• CAPTOR mine

Coffee Table that Gun Crate

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What does your furniture say about your choices as a gun guy? Sure, you have lots of neat wood grain and leather stuff around. But what about that center of your living room? Does it really identify you as a fire breathing god of all that is metal and wood and leave no doubt that you are a firearm connoisseur? Well then, a DIY gun crate-repurposing project may be all you.

mosin nagant crate turned into coffee table

Read more in my column at Firearms Talk.com

 

The Ruger Blackhawk in .30 Carbine

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A product of 1960s experimentation, the carbine caliber Ruger Blackhawk is almost unknown in the gun world. This does not mean, however, that is unloved. On the contrary, these hard-hitting long barreled wheelguns are a very interesting niche carved out for them.

blackhawk 30

In the 1950s, the most popular television shows were almost all based in the Old West. Sure, they were mostly fictional accounts of an age that was romanticized, but a hit nonetheless. Little boys ran around with cowboy hats and Red Ryder BB guns. Older boys scoured dusty cases in their local hardware stores looking for Colt Single Action .45 revolvers. This is when Bill Ruger decided to take the then-public domain Colt, which was long out of production, and rework it. He added adjustable sights, used wire coil springs instead of the Colt’s original flat leaf springs, and introduced modern production practices to the old the vintage gun to come up with the Blackhawk in 1955. Chambered in .357/38 it was a more modern take on the famous old gun.

By 1962, Ruger had improved the design and added an option to chamber the gun in .41 Magnum. Then in 1967, they added a new caliber to the line that seemed almost as odd then as now…
Read the rest in my column at Ruger Talk

To Stipple or Not to Stipple That Glock?

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If you have a Glock, you know for a fact that you have one of the plainest gun grips in the world and there is not a lot you could
do to change that with a set of aftermarket grips as on other pistols. One very common DIY trick for this is stippling. This act of burning holes in things that you love may (or may not) be the answer you are looking for.

Basically put, this act of modification is accomplished by pushing something very hot and very hard (think steel) into your
medium. While in our case it’s done to plastic (err, we mean high impact polymer), it can also be done to wood or similar items. Its an outgrowth of the old-school scroll worker’s inlay known as pyrography used to checker stocks and such. The ‘stipple’ that is left behind is the opposite of a ‘nipple’ in the respect that sinks in rather than pokes out. The best way to perform this act on a Glock in question is with a soldering iron. Most serious stipplers use small, ultra-fine point battery-powered models to keep from having a cord get in the way.

If you get too aggressive with it, you can always sand it back down as smooth as you like…

stipled glock 26
Read the rest in my column at Glock Forum   

Jungle Style Your Magazines

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Across the steamy jungles of the South Pacific, American soldiers and marines in the Second World War often used the tactic of taping multiple magazines together to speed up their reloading process. This tactic survives to this day. After all, if one mag was good, two must be great right?

m3 eurpoe jungle style
Read more in my column at Firearms Talk.com

Concealed Carry and Older Shooters

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It was once said in an old Colt advertisement that the modern revolver was great equalizer. For many in our society that are considered seniors, this has never been more of a true statement than today.

In a recent concealed carry class that I was giving for a preparedness group, I ran into a nice older woman named Mary. Her husband, a retired cop, had always said he was going to teach her how to shoot but never got around to it. Sadly, Ms. Mary’s husband walked towards the light and left her alone.

Now, traveling often back and forth several miles to visit grandchildren, work part time, and attend church, Ms. Mary felt she needed to learn.

rossi_m68_38_special_revolver_ 3 inch bbl

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com

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