Gun P0rn – Page 21 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Day 1 – Small Bore Day

I’ll post pictures of Texas when I get bored, and over this weekend. Not really many of Bitter, I’m sorry to say, because she blogs anonymously. So do I, but I don’t have to be as concerned about images as she does. But fear not readers, I would not deprive you of pictures of chicks and guns, so Carrie will fill in for Bitter.

We spent our first day in Texas scouting out some good shooting places. Carrie’s brother had told me I could expect long range shooting opportunities. About the most that could be reasonably done was 200 yards, due to lack of back stoppage. For small bore shooting I set up some logs to act as a stop for the bullets, mostly shooting at spinners and cans.

Carrie shooting my 10/22, that I tricked out after the Assault Weapons Ban expired. The folding stock really makes it a menace to society, or makes it fit in the rifle case easier… one of the two. You’ll have to forgive our appearances. It was kind of muddy out, and we weren’t dressing for success.

Loading up the 10/22 magazine. Bitter took this because she likes my Smith & Wesson 629 Classic. Unfortunately, it also shows how much work I have to do on the bike and hiking trail when the weather turns this spring. I have to wear the belt tight to hold up a pistol that heavy. I hate that holster too because it exposes the trigger. Any suggestions for a better holster for a 629? Any suggestions for losing weight? :)

Shooting the 10/22, probably at the spinner targets. For bench we were shooting at about 75 meters. Standing, I have to get to about 25 to be able to hit the spinners consistently. You’ll notice something different about the 10/22 when I’m shooting it, as opposed to when Carrie is. Can you see what’s different?

Bitter thought I should get a least one pic of myself shooting something that wasn’t an evil black rifle. I have to admit, I enjoyed shooting Carrie’s bolt action .22. I’ll have a lot of respect for anyone who can ID that rifle. I had never seen one, as they stopped making them long before I was born.

That night we tried to make a fire using the damp mesquite wood from the wood pile.Â Despite being near desert, it had rained a lot the night before.Â I’ll post the resulting video o’ blackness from that failed effort sometime later.

Pretty Cool

It’s a slow day. Lots to do at work, and lots of preparation for Bitter and my’s Texas Fun Time Shootout trip. I figured I’d crack open the stuff I’ve meant to blog about, but have kept in reserve for just such an occasion. From Clayton Cramer, we have this totally cool animated diagram of the Glock pistol.

For those of you who think that Austrian Tupperware is an affront to God, Country, and John Moses Browning, you can see a 1911 version of the same thing on this page.

I bought this for myself as a birthday present. Since I was born in 1974, the year the rifle was adopted by the Red Army, I thought it was only appropriate. Of course, this isn’t a real AK-74, in the sense that it has no select-fire capability, but it’s a copy with a semi-automatic trigger group to keep me from being a menace to society. It’s one of the Arsenal SLR models. I decided to share some pictures of it. Click on the image to see a larger version:

The AK-74 Minus Bayonet. Can anyone make out the book it’s propped up on? I thought it was a nice touch.

Bayonet out of the scabbard posed on the side. The AK-74 has black polymer furniture and a polymer magazine, compared to the wood furniture you get on an AK-47, and its sturdy metal magazine. The 74 is a bit lighter than the AK-47, but not by a whole lot.

Bayonet fixed to the rifle. My AK-47 lacks a bayonet lug, because it is post-ban, and the assault weapons ban forbade this “evil” feature. Also, the flash hider is integral to stabilizing the bayonet, which was another “evil” feature you didn’t see on Kalashnikovs during the ban. I’m not eager to replace my AK-47 with a “no ban” model, because the original AK-47 didn’t have a bayonet lug or flash hider. Those features didn’t come until later revisions.

It shoots pretty nicely, as it doesn’t have quite the kick of the AK-47, taking a much smaller cartridge, 5.45x39mm as opposed to 7.62x39mm. The felt recoil is actually less than the AR-15. I would imagine the AK-74 would be quite controllable on full-auto fire compared to the AK-47. I’ve never shot a Kalashnikov on full-auto, though, so it’s hard to say. My plan is to take this to Texas to get rid of all the 5.45x39mm corrosive ammo I have. I don’t shoot this rifle nearly as much as I like, because with the corrosive ammo, I have to clean everything out every time.

Careful Answering That Cell Phone…

… it might be able to fire 4 .22LR cartridges on you.

That’s pretty neat. This demo is apparently from Europe. If any managed to get into the US, they’d be regulated as NFA items (AOW).

Anyone Know What This Is?

Michael Yon needs some help identifying what looks like some type of rocket launcher or recoilless rifle:

I’m pretty familiar with the world’s weapons sytems, but I have no idea. I’m prepared to say it’s a hack job.Â I don’t think the Chinese or the Russians produce anything that looks like this.

h/t: Instapundit

Photoblog – Arctic Weekend

Some photos of this weekend’s insane camping out in the cold and snow. We were on top of a mountain, about 2300 feet (which is high for Pennsylvania), so temperatures were close to 0 degrees F. I went with another blogger, who some of you might know, and met one of my coworkers and her husband up there. A few camping and shooting pictures here:

http://www.pagunblog.com/blogpics/arctic-weekend/taj-mahal.jpg

My coworker’s tent I nicknamed the Taj Mahal, because of its luxurious nature. The stove keeps it reasonably warm in side.

My coworker’s husband Steve packing the gear up at the end of the weekend. I owe him a Klondike Bar. I brought up a pack of them, buried them in the snow, then ended up skewering one of them with a bayonet as I poked around for them.
The best way to roast marshmallows is with a Mosin-Nagant bayonet. Nothing like mashmallows eaten with a hint of cosmoline and hoppes no 9. Mmmm.

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Your host enjoying the last of his non-corrosive 5.45x39mm ammo fired out of the AK74. I have a whole crate that’s corrosive stuff, but, unlike with a surplus bolt action, you have to clean out the entire gas system, the flash hider, bolt and bolt carrier in addition to cleaning the barrel out. I had no idea they made 5.45x39mm with corrosive primers, and found out the hard way. I don’t win any fashion awards, clearly, but when in cold weather, if you’re going to shoot a commie gun, in a pinko caliber, you should wear a red army hat.

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My AR-15 being shot by the mystery blogger. Maybe you can guess who this is?

I decided to take the Mosin-Nagant out into the cold so it could feel at home. Our mystery blogger had a lot of fun shooting it, despite the fact that the rifle brutalizes the shooter, much like the system that produced it. I’ve though about calling that soreness you feel the next morning after shooting that rifle “Stalin’s Revenge”.

Despite the casualty of a Klondike Bar, fun was had by all. Did a bit of hiking, including out onto the frozen lake, and a bit of dead reckoning through snow covered woods. Too much to drink Saturday night, combined with single digit temperatures makes for an interesting morning experience. Had to wait until the afternoon for the hangover to go away before heading out to the range. Both myself and the mystery blogger feel that arctic survival is a lot of fun, and would like to try it again sometime, perhaps for a more protracted amount of time. A bit of advise, though, about cold weather: water freezes. It’s a good idea to sleep with your drinking water, or when you get up in the morning thirsty, you’ll be screwed like I was. Fortunatly, the Taj Mahal had drinking water inside that wasn’t frozen, but I had to walk all the way over there with a dreadful hangover. Not fun! Because I was paranoid about carbon monoxide poisoning, I opted not to stay in the heated tent with my coworkers. Another bit of advise: 0 degree sleeping bags will keep you alive at 0 degrees, but they won’t keep you warm. It makes me want to try Alaska though sometime.

Rail Gun Porn

While we’re talking about futuristic weapons, how about some rail gun porn? Hat tip to powerlabs.org.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=c4ZjGUFh_c4[/youtube]
This is a 15 Kilojoule shot at target. You can see the plasma arc coming out of the gun. On their site, they say a lot of the energy got wasted because of the metal vaporization. Sad.[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=tV7aB8_0R74[/youtube]
8.3KJ shot with aluminium/teflon projectile. Apparently sending the projectile supersonic.Take a trip over to powerlabs to get the details. You could build one of these yourself if you wanted to.

How’s This for Home Defense?

This is a pretty interesting shotgun.Â I didn’t realize if you pistolized a shotgun if qualified as an AOW.Â I think because it doesn’t have rifling in the barrel.Â This could be good for someone who is in a small house or apartment with tight corners, where a full sized shotgun might be too cumbersome to wield.Â Pay your $5 dollar AOW NFA tax, and one can be yours!

Look What the Brown Truck of Happiness Has Brought!

Let me just say, it’s pretty cool having the UPS man bring a rifle right to your door, after you ordered it off the modern Internets. Today’s delivery was a Mosin-Nagant M91/30, which is a rifle you would have been well familiar with if you were a Soviet soldier in the Great Patriot War. Of course, you wouldn’t have been familiar with it for long, because your life expectancy as a soldier in the Red Army was probably measured in hours. What makes the Mosin-Nagant a great rifle isn’t that it’s a particularly great rifle, it’s that you can go look in your sofa to come up with the money to pay for one. It’ll also happily fire ammunition that’s been buried in a farmer’s field in the Ukraine since the First World War, which he’d probably be happy to trade for a liter of vodka.

Shipped from Century Arms, in from the Great State of Vermont, nicely packed in the box:

Wrapped in the local paper, the Milton Independent.

I love what makes the front page there. A quiet day on Lake Arrowhead!Â I’m really glad they are getting that mold problem under control though. Must be from all the moldy Massholes moving in ;)

The whole deal showing right here. This rifle is arsenal refinished, so the furniture looks pretty good. A few dings and scrapes here and there, but nothing awful.

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The receiver markings show this comes from the Izhevsk arsenal in Russia, manufactured in 1944.Â You can also see the hammer and sickle, certifying the rifle as 100% commie.Â It’s a shame though, the Russian Imperial markings were much nicer and more ornate than the Soviet era ones.

Like every other rifle I’ve ever gotten from Eastern Europe, it’s packed in a good bit of cosmoline, which will have to be cleaned off before it gets shot. I have an idea of how this must go:

“Igor, you know the Americans, I have heard they love cosmoline.”
“It is true, they can never have enough! Pass me some more will you, Sascha.”

So once the cosmoline comes off, I will have to give a try.Â I’ll post a range report when I get around to it.Â Time to enter this one into the bound book and put it away for now.Â Also on my list for C&R aquisition: Soviet Military Makarov, Nagant Revolver (the pistol that put the ‘Russian’ in Russian Roulette), an M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, a decent Mauser, and anything else interesting I run across.Â I’m still going to be mostly an EBR shooter, but I figured I’d round out my collection with some historical pieces.Â Might as well as long as I can get them delivered to my door.Â I think they need to make the C&R license apply to everything though.Â My checkbook, however, probably will disagree.