Category: Shooting

Who says that more traditional shooting sports like trap have to be boring?

Video via Charles C W Cooke who adds: “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen and I will not be happy until I’ve done it.”

Someone is calling for criminal charges against Remington execs because he claims the Remington 700 trigger system is dangerous.

The Aleksich lawsuit was over a 1988 incident similar to the one that killed Barber’s son. Fourteen-year-old Brent Aleksich was shot through both legs by his brother, Brock, when the Remington 700 Brock was holding fired after he released the safety, the lawsuit said.

Of course, the question I would have is why you were pointing a rifle at your brother’s legs? This is why we have the four rules. I don’t know enough about the Remington 700 to have an opinion as to whether the trigger is flawed, but this is why we don’t point guns at people.

Caleb caused quite a stir when he noted that wheelguns are obsolete. Tim followed up, noting that the issue was capacity. Tam notes that the correct word is “obsolescent.”

Any bets on how long it takes for the first commenter to say “If’n my revolver’s so obsole… obsolecs… obso-whatever, why don’t you stand over there and let me shoot it at you?” Hey, a Model A is obsolescent, but I wouldn’t bet you couldn’t drive one to New York.

I used to carry an N-frame sometimes when I hiked, mostly because it’s a cheaper and more reasonable option over a Desert Eagle, if you want a pistol capable of firing a cartridge that can top 1000ft-lbs of muzzle energy. I’ve never had much interest in revolvers other than as a trail gun and for IHMSA competition, back when I had time for that.

… crazy people are just the pretext. I don’t think too many people would suggest Adam Lanza was engaged in recreational shooting, but naturally we’re the ones who are made to pay for his sins. Is this really how a just society is supposed to work?

Via guns save lives. It’s a money back recall, as in can’t be fixed. You send them your gun back and they’ll refund your money. I use different rules for collector pieces, but I generally won’t have a primary carry gun that isn’t, at the least, commonly issued by police departments. Back when I was new to this and stupid, I carried a Bersa Thunder .380. I carried that until the magazine safety mechanism broke and the gun stopped functioning with less than 1000 rounds on it. I still haven’t gotten it fixed because it can sit in my safe broken just as easily as sit in it fixed. Now my primary carry gun is a Glock 19, and I don’t see that changing. Backup or pocket guns are another ball o’ wax.

UPDATE: More from TFB here, who is also covering the recall.

This piece in Slate from a non-gun owner who claims he doesn’t know many gun owners is an extremely positive review of Top Shot. He highlights what’s great about the show, mainly that they focus on true competition judged solely by documented performance rather than some arbitrary opinion or rating from a so-called expert.

But, he really emphasizes the importance of shows like this post-Newtown.

For people like me, who neither own a gun nor know very many people who do, the show helps counteract some of the most extreme, uninformed stereotypes that many liberals and urbanites have about “gun guys.” The show clearly demonstrates something that often gets lost in the heat of the gun control debate: that gun owners aren’t all crazy survivalists or slavering right-wing fanatics. A lot of them are just reasonable, responsible sportsmen who enjoy shooting guns because shooting guns can be a lot of fun.

You really should go read the whole article, even if you’re not that into the show. It’s a very eye-opening piece on many levels of the gun debate.

It almost makes me regret not having cable since it means we can’t easily tune in.

You know that Ohio instructor who shot one of his students in class? Turns out this isn’t the first time he’s shot someone, the last incident being in 1977, and is coming to light now because when the person he accidentally shot read about the latest incident, she spoke up.

“Oh no, he’s done it again,” Hessler, now Cathy Schmelzer, 50, told the paper after she heard of the latest shooting.  “I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’” she said, according to the Dispatch.

I’d say if you find yourself at a point in life where you’ve shot two people accidentally, it’s probably a really good idea to seriously examine your relationship with firearms, and decide if maybe you’d be better off taking up a hobby where reckless abandon is considerably less consequential. Chess is a good hobby.

I hope everyone had a satisfactory weekend. I spent part of it at Cabela’s teaching my dad how to buy ammo without looking like a newb. Several years ago he moved from the Delaware Valley to Bumfsck, Central Pennsylvania, and he’s been interacting with the local culture. Unfortunately, the rifle I lent him is chambered in .17HMR, which is about as rare as hen’s teeth these days, so I was growing concerned that we wouldn’t be able to feed it.

Fortunately he just called and told me he scored some at a local gun shop. I guess panicking suburbanites aren’t making their way out to the rural shops to clean the shelves of rimfire ammo just yet. A quick safety check shows he was learning good habits, so the people teaching him seem to be on top of that kind of thing. That’s not something I wanted to take for granted because some of the poorest gun handling I’ve seen has been on public ranges in rural areas where everyone grows up around it. Fortunately, my dad has access to a private range. As I’ve mentioned before, I did not grow up in a gun owning family. I didn’t really get into shooting until after I moved out and had a decent paying job where I could afford toys.

The New York Rifle & Pistol Association is raising money for their legal fund to challenge the SAFE Act by raffling off a machine gun shoot for two in Pennsylvania that even includes a night at a local hotel. That’s a pretty good idea to look at surrounding states to have fun shooting events when it has been banned locally. They feature video of previous shoots by the company:

Perhaps in an effort to save their stock value that has been falling almost since they went public, Groupon has decided not to run their business based on politics anymore. They have recently started offering shooting sports & training coupons again in areas where there was strong interest from both consumers and businesses.

The funniest part of the article is from Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Ownership who decried that Groupon didn’t put out a press release in advance of the change. Ladd declares such policy changes without notifying him the media to be “wrong” and “underhand[ed].”