Tab Clearing...

• Norway's closing its last coal mine in Svalbard, which could have unexpected geopolitical repercussions...


• The outgoing director of the BATFEIEIO has a sad.


• Coinage and currency in fantasy role-playing games.

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Heavy Mettle

The upside: A 9mm this heavy with a good trigger is really easy to shoot well.

The downside: Not cheap.

The full review can be found here.

Who down wit' P.I.D.? Yeah, you know me!

Gorillafritz has an excellent post on the importance of positive target identification in averting tragic, and potentially fatal, mistakes:

"Let me start by saying that no one in this situation did anything wrong. The cop was trying to make sure a boy wasn’t going to kill himself. The homeowner was legally defending his residence from a suspicious intruder approaching the back door of his house. Some frazzled nerves, poor training, or a couple more pounds of pressure on either weapon’s trigger would have resulted in a tragic outcome.

How do we prevent situations like this from going bad?"

Go read the whole thing.

Your house is not a free-fire zone. Use a flashlight. If you don't have a flashlight... well, you're wrong ...but if you don't have a flashlight, turn on the lights. If the power's out, ask "Who's there?"

Don't just shoot at shapes and shadows.

Tab Clearing...

• Jim Grey's first impressions of the Nikon 35Ti he purchased from me. (It's a really neat camera but I have reluctantly come to accept I'm not a wide-angle street shooter and it's nice to see it go somewhere it'll get some use. I still have my Kodak S1100 XL nostalgia camera if I want to give it another try.)


• The Volvo 122S 5-door wagon.


• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

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Writing Elsewhere...

• Cold Weather Carry


• 2000 Jaguar XJR


• Player B Has Entered the Game


• 1964 Oldsmobile F-85 sedan

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Brace for the Arglebargle...

The laws surrounding the manufacture and sale of firearms, or even of what is and isn't a firearm in the first place, are complicated enough that event the majority of gun owners aren't familiar with even a fraction of them. (Remember that if you would list "guns" or "shooting" as one of your hobbies or interests, that alone puts you in a minority subset of people who own firearms.)

When I saw the video of the dude capping the UnitedHealthcare CEO, like Ian over at Forgotten Weapons I knew it wasn't (like idiot spokespeople at the NYPD claimed) a B&T VP9.

At the time, I remember hoping that it was at least a factory clone and not an 80% kit build or a 3D-printed frame because that would unleash a tidal wave of stupid from the sort of people who not only know nothing about guns or gun laws, but also don't like them very much.

And here we are...

At first glance, the gun in the police photographs — the one the authorities believe Luigi Mangione used to kill the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare — appears to be a Glock-19, a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol used by military forces, police officers, civilians and criminals all over the world.

But upon closer inspection, it is clear that the weapon was not factory-made, but was at least partially produced by a 3D printer. The giveaways are subtle: The Glock logo is absent from the pistol’s grip, where it would ordinarily be imprinted, and the angle of the grip is peculiar. Indentations on the grip, known as stippling, are patterned in such a way that the gun’s “fingerprint” can be directly linked to a unique free-to-download 3D-printed design known as the FMDA 19.2 Chairmanwon Remix.

In the first sentence I'm already annoyed by the hyphen in "Glock-19" and it doesn't get much better from there.

Boomsticks: The new Ruger/Magpul RXM...

Testing continues on the Savage Stance XR.

Meanwhile, I can finally talk about the new Ruger. In a world where there are already several Gen3 Glock 19 clones of varying quality, it's easy to go "Ho-hum, another one..."

But Ruger and Magpul are both manufacturers that know what they're doing; this isn't some back-alley operation in Istanbul.

Plus, it's not a Gen3 Glock clone, but rather a vastly product-improved pistol that happens to have used the G19 as a jumping off point. It has a direct-mounting optical system that is similar to that on the Echelon that will accommodate the three most popular optic footprints (RMR, DP Pro, RMSc) and comes with co-witness sights including a tritium insert up front with a high-viz surround. The fire control unit is in a true chassis, for grip-swapping customizability. Best of all, the price point is...aggressive.

Everything good about a Glock MOS and then some, without having to put up with Glock's adapter plate setup, which is frankly starting to look like hot garbage compared to everyone else's, at a screamingly low price? That's likely to make a dent in the market.

Testing is underway for an upcoming feature-length review in Shooting Illustrated.

On the upside, and on the downside...

On the upside, I am vindicated for all the times over the last couple days I've had to explain to people that "No, I don't care what the NYPD spokesperson said, it's not a B&T Veterinary Pistol, it's a regular recoil-operated nine. Probably a G19 or clone."

On the downside, now I have to brace for a tidal wave of derp about so-called "ghost guns" and 3D printing.

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Not the sharpest knife in the drawer...

In case you, like me, were ever wondering who buys those weird blingy 'Special Limited Edition Gold Plated Commemorative' guns, the answer appear to be "people who do a lot of drugs and then fly to Australia to attend clown school".

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Lots of people can't even spell 'tariff'...

I've been scrolling around and adding twenty-plus percent to Sellier & Bellot, Magtech, Fiocchi, Wolf, PMC, some varieties of Winchester...

(This is to say nothing of CZ, Taurus, most HKs and Glocks, all the various Turkish companies, lotsa Berettas...)

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Written Elsewhere...

• My 200th post at Cars Gone By: A 1966 Mustang GT convertible.


• On the reasons behind the enduring popularity of the 1911.


• The U-Shaped Utility Curve of All the Things.

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Gun Geekery...

The patent that made the micro-nine possible...

Micro pistol and micro poker.

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Swole Savage

New from Savage is this upgrade of the Stance, called the Stance XR.

It's higher capacity than the original, shipping with a 10-round flush-fit mag and a 13-round 'stendo, and it has the most innovative quick-detach MRDS mount I've yet seen. It allows a lower-third co-witness (at least with this Riton dot), comes with night sights, adds a tabbed trigger for enhanced drop safety, and the dot mount seems to have true return-to-zero functionality.

A feature-length review is coming in Shooting Illustrated as soon as I've wrung it out some more. (I already put a bit more than half a case of ammo through it in a 2-day class with Chris Cerino at Range Ready earlier this year.)

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Ballistic Testing...

At the range yesterday doing ballistic gel shooting with a few loads in two different chamberings, one of which was .327 Federal Magnum. The test gun was this Taurus 327 TORO with a Gideon Judge optic.

As a control round, I used a .32 H&R Magnum Hornady 80gr FTX Critical Defense. The Critical Defense did not expand through 4LD, and I didn't expect that ti would. It came to rest backwards in the gel block, 13" in.

The .327 Federal Hydra-Shok 85gr projectile, normally an iffy expander in 4LD, proved that even an iffy projectile can expand if you put enough ass behind it. It mushroomed nicely and came to rest, also base-first, at the 14" mark, just beyond the Hornady bullet.

The 100gr .327 Fed Gold Dot worked exactly as predicted: It expanded like a catalog photo and was found tangled in the denim on the far side of the 16" gel block. This is pretty much identical to what you get from 9mm 124gr +P GDHP and HST, which are pretty much the current gold standards, and it's what the load was designed to emulate.

That's the load I'm going to sight the dot in with.

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Tab Clearing...

• Tribal Lore of the People of the Gun: A great list of essential reading from Gorillafritz. If you don't know where yo've come from, it's hard to figure out which way you should be going.


• A weird longing for the communist past among some Russians, and the weird love of Russia from some Americans are two things I just do not understand. The Cold War sucked.


• Bobbi fell into a burning (jalapeño) ring of fire.

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Random Gun Stuff...

• The Case for Pocket Poppers: Not everything needs to be a Glock 19.


• Why "Well, I know a Green Beret, and he said..." may not have much relevance to private citizen defensive firearms use.


• What's the difference between porting and compensators?

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Celebrities are supposed to be role models, right?

Sean "Diddy" Combs knows the score: A dry carbine is a malfunction-prone carbine...

There are two kinds of people: Those who were horrified by this article, and those who were horrified by this article but wish with every fiber of their being that they could have sent this screen shot to Uncle Pat.

(Note for the humorless: By all accounts this guy is a real dirtbag, one of those sorts of dude who uses clout and success as tools to victimize women for his personal jollies, and they're apparently still writing books to throw at him... but any gun nerd chuckled at the plain text of that headline.)

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Hey, Look!

Always be learning!

The first few times at the range with a handgun are a real big deal for most folks, and you’re likely to imprint pretty strongly on the first pistols you tried, the words of wisdom from your dad/cop friend/whoever took you to the range that first time and the coaching from the instructor at your first concealed-carry class.

For most people, that’s about as far as it goes. Shooting isn’t a hobby, nor are guns a lifestyle for most firearm owners. They’ll get to the range a couple times a year, maybe, and 20 years from now they’ll still be shooting the same way they were when they started out. They may retain some of the basics, or they may not.

The fact that you’re reading my column in this magazine indicates that you’re probably a little more into shooting than the statistically most common handgun owner. Like the music enthusiast who seeks out new bands to listen to, you’re probably more open to broadening your shooting horizons than Joe and Suzy Average. Perhaps you seek out coaching from different instructors in order to learn new techniques. I know I do.

Ink on Steel, Old and New

Issue number 40 of RECOIL: CONCEALMENT is available, and I've got two pieces in it: A Classic Carry piece on the Harrington & Richardson self-loading .25 and .32 pistols from ye olden tymes, and a 400-round review of the new Bersa B1911.

The data box David Merrill did for the H&R .25 made me spew soda out my nose...

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Lever-age

At the range last week I helped Michael Grasso dial in his .44 levergun with some .44 Special loads, just because having a gun in the house with an unsighted optic is anathema to all right-thinking people.

That mount for the Aimpoint Acro was pretty groovy. I hadn't gotten a good look at one before. I also dug the Magpul ELG furniture, although I'd expected to. I remember being skeptical of their shotgun stock before it came out and winding up having to eat crow, so...

Some people are skeptical, but I think a levergun has its uses, although it's possible to get carried away with one. 

I remember back at TacCon '19, Lee Weems made a pretty good case for why he used a .30-30 as a patrol rifle...