Gunday Morning

A. Uberti single-action Cattleman Hombre in .45 caliber Long Colt.

This is a replica of the 1873 Colt Single-Action Army, more commonly known as the Peacemaker.

Ding Dong

It sure ain't Avon calling. The Telegraph reports on a new trend in home sales parties. No, it isn't food storage systems, makeup, cookware or even sex toys. It's Tasers - marketed to women in home party settings.

First there were Tupperware parties. Then came cosy, at-home sales pitches to female consumers for everything from perfume to lingerie to Botox.

Miss Shafman, 35, is on a mission to persuade the fearful, but fashion-conscious, women of America to pack 50,000 volts of self-defence in their handbags.

"This device has changed my life," she told a room full of women in suburban Miami last week. "I no longer live in fear. I challenge you all with one question. How will you defend yourself if you’re attacked?"

The Arizona entrepreneur deployed her sales patter and folksy western charm as she praised the merits of the palm-sized C2 stun gun – available for $350 in a variety of fashionable colours, including the best-selling "hot pink".

Tasers are legal in all but eight states. I see nothing odd about this at all, incidentally. Tasers are small and light and easier to carry and handle than a gun in many cases. The only thing I'd caution here is that the devices should not give owners false confidence. You still have to be ready, willing and able to use the Taser when you need to. You also should not be putting yourself into risky situations just because you have one of these in your pocket. In other words, just possessing one grants no magic protection. Being armed with one - and being quite willing to use it when necessary - might make all the difference in the world.

Here's the product page for the C2 Taser.

Arms Race

My wife and I went out for a while today and decided to stop at a sporting goods store. I had wanted to take a look at a handgun but declined to buy it when the store did not carry extra magazines for the gun and also wanted to charge an exorbitant fee to transfer it to the state I reside in. Some bargains are simply not worth it. While browsing further, we looked at one of these:

But my wife told me we didn't need it, so I didn't buy it. I wandered off for a while looking around at other things when my cell phone started ringing. My youngest boy (who was with us) called and said that Mommy was buying the SU-16 for herself.

Now I know why she wouldn't let me buy it. 

FNP-9 First Tryout

I posted about getting this yesterday. I took it out today to give it a try. 200 rounds through it with no problems whatsoever. Because of the light weight, the precieved recoil is a bit higher than with my Taurus PT-92, but not uncomfortable. The gun is highly accurate but it does bounce a bit more than the PT-92. This isn't really a problem however and didn't take much getting used to. Very fun to shoot. I had also taken this pistol out to the range and put 100 rounds through it:

This one is scary accurate. My wife shot both and like the big PT-1911 better than the FN. When I got home, I cleaned the PT-1911 first, which took about forever. The Taurus version of the venerable John Browning 1911 design is faithful to the original and breaks down in the same fashion. So you have various bits and pieces of gun laying about everywhere when you get it apart. There are lots and lots of nooks and crannies to clean. Then I took apart the FN. After taking it down - the easiest takedown I have ever seen - there were four pieces. Barrel, spring/guide assembly, slide and body. No pins, no loose parts. The flat recoil spring is captive on the guide. That is a beautifully designed handgun. John Browning would be very proud of what FN has done in the almost 100 years since he rolled out the 1911.

The Easter Gunny Drops By

In what has become an annual tradition here at the Crabitat, the Easter Gunny dropped by for a visit:

Fabrique National (Herstal) FNP-9. 9mm parabellum. Polymer body, black-finished stainless steel slide. Double-single action. 16 + 1 magazine capacity (three magazines standard with pistol). Three dot fixed sights. Interchangeable handgrip backstrap (flat or arched). Ambidextrous de-cocking levers, no manual safety. And it has a rail. 

Ride ‘Em, Cowboy

My daughter helped out a friend of hers when the local 4-H group could not get enough kids to participate in a horse-grooming contest. While at the fair, she saw an exhibition of Cowboy Mounted Shooting and came home raving about wanting to try it. As it turns out, one of her classmates is a competitor and is reportedly rather good at it. The sport combines barrel racing with shooting (blanks, only). I saw this feature and was reminded of all that.

NEW ORLEANS - His trusty six-shooters loaded, the cowboy gallops off, reins in one hand, pistol in the other. As his horse twists and slews, he shoots. Pow! Pow! Pow!Pow!Pow! Now it's a straight run: PowPowPowPowPow! Nine of the 10 balloons are dead, dead, really dead.

Part barrel-riding, part marksmanship, part costuming and several parts noise, it's cowboy mounted shooting — a sport that started with three guys at a Phoenix shooting range in 1992 and now has about 7,000 members in 42 states and Sweden.

The Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association's calendar lists 436 events from Florida to Alaska — at least 10 a month, with December off.

Louisiana's state championship is Saturday evening in Amite, about an hour's drive north of New Orleans. It's among nine events just this weekend and 57 this month.

Chuck Duncan, president of Louisiana Territory Guys, Gals & Guns and an assistant professor of kinesiology and education at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, expects 20 to 25 competitors. "We're still trying to establish the sport here," he said. Spectators get in free.

The sport is a spin-off from cowboy action shooting, in which costumed contestants run through full-size sets and shoot bullets at full-sized targets. Cowboy action shooting devotees not only span the United States, but include clubs in Canada, Australia and Europe, including Switzerland and Scandinavia.

The official Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association website (motto: Raw Horsepower - Hard Ridin' - Straight Shootin') has primers on how to get started in the sport. Only approved firearms can be used (single action .45 caliber guns of specific make and model) and there is a rather strict dress code. The blank cartridges must be from an approved vendor and are loaded and unloaded by an official at the competitions.

Sometimes, You Have A Good Day

My son called me yesterday and asked if I wanted to go shooting today at the club. A good friend of his from back in Illinois was out visiting (he was the best man at my son's wedding last year). So today we all gathered up the ordnance and went down to the club. We didn't bring any long guns, just handguns. We duly signed in, checked that there was a Range Safety Officer (RSO) at the rifle/pistol range (there was) and trooped on down there.

Oddly, my son had not read the "Easter Gunny" post and was very surprised when I pulled that 1858 New Model Army replica out. The RSO laughed when he saw it because of the enormous barrel. You really have to see it to understand how truly huge a 12-inch barrel on a handgun really is. After the targets were up, I capped the revolver - I had loaded the chambers at home, but not mounted the percussion caps. We walked on down to the firing line and got set to shoot. When the RSO said it was ok to shoot, I stepped up to about the 25-foot mark, cocked the big Remington, aimed and pulled the trigger. An impressive boom followed and a great deal of powder smoke erupted from the gun.

Whereupon the target, a self-adhesive 12-inch bullseye type, went flying, knocked right off the backboard. Everyone was laughing. My son went over and picked it up from where it had flown off to. When he stood up, he showed the target. Almost perfectly dead center in the bullseye there was a brand new .44 caliber hole. The RSO laughed a bit and said it kind of wasn't fair, with that long barrel, the gun was almost touching the target when I extended my arms. I told him I shouldn't shoot again that day and retire undefeated, so to speak. That made him laugh.

Everyone wanted to try a shot, my son came very close to my shot, my youngest boy hit a little high but in the black, My son's friend hit just below my shot and then my daughter's shot misfired. After talking it over with the RSO, he decided that we could fire the sixth chamber, so my daughter got to take her shot. She was a bit to the right. We headed back to the table where our more modern weapons were and took turns firing various guns. (The targets were looking very sad by this point.) Meanwhile, I had cleared the blockage on the nipple on the revolver and talked to the RSO about shooting the gun clear. He decided it would be a good idea to retry it, so we went down range, I capped the cylinder and the gun fired perfectly.

I went back and started reloading the revolver. The RSO told the kids, "Hey, I think your dad is reloading the howitzer," which made me laugh. The RSO was fascinated. He was a black powder shooter, but of the modern rifles, not the old revolvers. He had never seen the process of loading one of these. To do it, you pour a measure of powder into a chamber (I was using 25 grains, a little lower than the maximum of 30 grains) Push in a wad, place a .454 caliber soft lead ball over the opening and rotate the cylinder to the bottom center. Then you seat the ball into the chamber by using the lever under the barrel to ram it home. If you do it right, you get a little ring of lead shaved off the ball. After all are loaded, you then apply a bit of "Bore Butter" to each cylinder (I found that a Q-Tip works best). This offensively bright yellow substance will a) condition the barrel and decrease fouling and b) prevent a "chain fire", which is a very unpleasant event.  

Note: Normally, a six shot revolver, especially of this type, should never, ever be loaded with six shots if you are carrying it. The hammer has no safety and lowering the hammer onto a live percussion cap is an operation that can go wrong all too easily. In this case, I loaded all six because I was not going to carry it anywhere, I capped it only at the firing line and the fact that the 1858 New Model Army actually has a safety feature. The hammer can be lowered into a neutral notch between the cylinders so there is much less danger of an unintentional discharge. (This also locks the cylinder in place.)

So it was a fun time for everyone - except the targets. They were mostly gone by the time we finished for the day.

The Easter Gunny

The Easter Gunny dropped by for a visit! Leaving a trail of .44 caliber eggs behind….. Model 1858 New Model Army, 12-inch barrel, modeled after the mythical "Buntline Special" revolvers. (And despite what you may have read as "fact", the story of Ned Buntline giving these revolvers to folks like Wyatt Earp are almost certainly myth.) Modern reproductions are manufactured in Italy by F. LLI Pietta and sold in the US under the nameplate of Traditions Firearms. Believe it or not, this is a very, very well balanced firearm despite the long barrel.

I Have To Hate You

Ok, not really hate. ENVY is the right word.

Packing Heat

Steve Chapman has a good piece up over at Real Clear Politics about concealed carry permits, the facts versus the scaremongering. The fact is that the horrific, lurid predictions that the gun control zealots keep spouting have not come true. And there is a good reason for that.

It may not be true, as some experts believe, that America has gotten safer because more people are legally packing heat. But it's impossible to claim that the change has made us less safe.

At the outset of this experiment, gun opponents forecast that hot-tempered pistoleros would spray bullets at the slightest provocation, requiring the rest of us to wade through rivers of blood just to cross the street. In fact, one of the most conspicous facts about handgun licensees is their mild temper. It's rare for them to commit crimes, and even rarer for them to use their firearms to commit crimes.

A report by the Texas Department of Public Safety found that in a state with more than 200,000 people licensed to carry guns, only 180 were convicted of crimes in 2001, and most of those crimes didn't involve firearms. Only one licensee was convicted of murder. Florida, which has nearly 400,000 permit holders, revoked only 330 licenses last year — about one out of every 1,200.

This record should not be surprising. As a rule, concealed-carry licenses are off-limits to anyone with a history of crime, substance abuse, drunk driving or serious mental illness, and most states require safety training. In any case, people who are inclined to commit mayhem generally don't seek state licenses to carry guns, any more than they ask permission to break into houses or beat up girlfriends. It's the law-abiding folks who apply for licenses.

Why would these peaceable souls want to take their guns when hiking or camping in a national park? Same reason they might take them other places: a desire to protect themselves. Though federal lands are mostly safe, they sometimes play host to crime. In fact, park rangers are far more likely to be assaulted or killed than FBI agents.

Of course the rivers of blood meme still comes up whenever a state enacts a CCW law. Of course the grim predictions simply never happen. And Chapman is precisely correct, when you give law-abiding citizens the right to carry concealed weapons, they remain law-abiding. It has always been the criminal types who don't get licenses for anything that have been the problem.

Really Bad Choice

Of people to try to rob.

A Knox County commissioner known for his pro-gun stance says he aborted an armed robbery at his car dealership Saturday with the aid of his .380-caliber pistol.

Greg "Lumpy" Lambert, who represents the 6th District in northwest Knox County, said he was at Advantage Auto Sales on Clinton Highway early Saturday afternoon when a young man began acting suspicious while test-driving a 2005 Ford Focus.

The man, identified as 19-year-old Kane Stackhouse, claimed to have $12,000 in his pocket and seemed intent on buying the car without any haggling or even a mechanical inspection, Lambert said.

Later, as the paperwork was being drawn up, Stackhouse stepped outside to smoke a cigarette, Lambert said. When the commissioner went outside to tell him it was time to work on the title, Stackhouse allegedly pulled a .25-caliber handgun from his jacket pocket.

Lambert, who was armed with a Kel-Tec .380-caliber pistol and wearing a "Friends of the NRA" ball cap, drew his gun. For a moment, the two men stared at one another down the barrels of their guns, according to Lambert's account.

"I think we probably leveled our sights close to the same time," Lambert said. "I think I got a bit of a drop on him. I told him to drop his weapon, and he said he didn't want any trouble."

Stackhouse didn't ask for money or issue any demands, Lambert said. "I didn't give him a chance to," he said.

Lambert said he convinced the young man to lay down his weapon and then told him to leave the premises, but not before letting him know he'd probably "be arrested at some point."

You can tell Tennessee is a fairly gun-friendly place. They helpfully identify the make and caliber of the gun the guy used to protect himself. I don't like the Kel-Tec, it's too small for my hand. I favor the Taurus PT-938, myself. It's a little more suited to my hand. And there's that 10+1 capacity. (I think the 938 is no longer available, at least in the US. The replacement is the Millennium Pro).

Gunday Evening

I haven't done a Gunday in a really long time, so here's one for a really slow Sunday. Smith & Wesson SW40VE in .40S&W caliber.

Food With A Bang!

Who says Britain is a dull place? Twice last week a processing plant that makes frozen French fries had to be evacuated when pieces of explosive ordnance turned up among the potatoes.

The Scarborough plant, owned by Canada's McCain Foods, the world's largest producer of frozen fries, was emptied Friday after a worker spotted a shell tip among the potatoes as they were being cleaned for slicing.

"The police were called and the bomb squad advised a 100 meter exclusion zone should be set up," said a McCain spokesman.

Saturday, an entire hand grenade was discovered in the potatoes and the plant in northern England was evacuated again.

Apparently, the explosive bits are coming in from France and Belgium and are leftovers from the first and second world wars. Now Mom used to make some pretty lethal things out of leftovers. I'm glad she never got ahold of any of these!

Talk About Timely

Almost as soon as the post about 40mm cannon shells went up this morning, this article from the Telegraph shows up. Ferry passengers were prevented from landing at the Twelve Quays ferry terminal on the Mersey after a 1,000 pound German bomb from World War Two was discovered floating near the terminal.

Two ferries carrying 250 passengers and crew were stranded for almost eight hours yesterday after a 1,000lb German wartime bomb was discovered floating in the Mersey.

It was detected by the sonar of a Royal Navy warship and last night bomb disposal experts towed it out to sea to be detonated.

Speculation is that the bomb was dislodged from it's resting place by high tides. It is believed to be a panzerbombe, a device used against shipping and fortifications. Divers marked the bomb with warnings, then set about getting it to a safe place for disposal.

At around 8.30am divers returned to the bomb, attaching a flotation bag which within 90 minutes had raised it to within 10ft of the surface.

The bomb was then securely strapped and towed into the middle of the river.

This allowed the two passenger ferries, Mersey Viking and Dublin Viking, from Belfast and Dublin respectively, to dock.

Merseyside Police and the coastguard service then assisted the Royal Navy in the operation to tow the bomb to the North Bar light in Liverpool Bay.

It was then lowered back on to the seabed and packed with plastic explosives ready for detonation.

According to a naval source, the minehunter was in the Mersey searching for the body of a missing businessman, as well as conducting a survey of the estuary bed.

As mentioned earlier - these things are still dangerous after all these years and must be disposed of properly (which basically means detonating them since they are by now too corroded to actually try to disarm).

They were lucky they found this one or it could have been a lot worse.

The Family That Shoots Together

Loots together.

My daughter, the budding assassin, competed in her first shooting event, a paper-target "turkey shoot". It was the first time she had even held a 20 gauge shotgun.

She took first place and won a Mossberg model 702 Plinkster .22 caliber rifle. It’s a special edition with a National Wild Turkey Federation medallion. (NWTF sponsored the event).

The local NWTF group wanted to present it to her at their annual banquet, so we dutifully bought tickets and went last night. These banquets are how groups like the NWTF raise funds, so there are raffles, drawings, silent auctions and a live auction as well. A lot of really nice wildlife art, sculptures and paintings both. And they have limited edition guns, too. So we dutifully bought tickets for various guns being drawn for, and bid on a couple of silent auction items.

We ended up with a really pretty duck sculpture, and a Leatherman tool my wife really wanted from the silent auction.

When the gun drawings started at the end of the evening, one of the guns was a Harrington & Richardson Handi Rifle in .243 Winchester caliber. Mrs. Arbo won it.

Then they drew for a Winchester 1300 12 gauge. (Destined to be a real collectors item since Winchester ceased production earlier this year.) I won that.

We left the banquet better armed than some small countries. My daughter is so very proud of her first gun - she won it all by herself. (I don’t think it was beginners luck, either. She literally can draw a smiley face on a target with a .22 caliber pistol.)

I can’t believe how lucky we were last night. Warning to anyone sitting next to my son when he reads this post. Stand back, spittle will be flying. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.