Black Beauty Is Dead

Colt!

The very name evokes imagery. A new-born stallion racing with the wind, Ferrari's rampant horse icon, and that of the Colt Firearms Company of Hartford, Connecticut!

Well, nobody has read "Black Beauty" for 20 years. Enzo Ferarri is dead, and so is Colt Firearms Company of Hartford, Connecticut.


Between the Single Action Army, and the Browning 1911, Colt managed for generations to sell every firearm they designed and produced. The phrase "Colt Legendary Quality" was well earned, as the fit and finish of Colt firearms were evidence of the craftsmanship of the near-unique production values of this famous company. Sons followed fathers into the factory, and took pride in their efforts to create the finest production firearms of their times.

The 1980's were the watershed for Colt. In 1984, when the U.S. Military replaced the 1911 with the egregious Beretta 92 as the standard-issue military sidearm, Colt (having largely ignored the civilian market, with the possible exception of small-niche revolvers) found itself a producer looking for a market.

Colt Firearms suffered a schizophrenic personality split, being divided between the "Colt Defense" military/leo/Private Security market and the lackadaisical "Civilian" market represented by Colt's Manufacturing Company LLC.

Somewhere between way-back-when and now, their union workers went on a wage-strike that lasted for four years. Colt hired unskilled workers to fill current orders, and the "Legendary Colt Quality" went straight down the tube. Eventually even their contracts for military firearms (such as the AR-16) went to foreign competitors.

The company tried to improve its relationship with the civilian market, but the lack of quality (and the misunderstanding of what their potential customers wanted) produced even more guns without a cause, and the few customers they had were even more disappointed with the quality.

The '90s were marked by another bankruptcy, somewhat mirroring that which the company had survived in the 19th century.

Colt sold to "Foreign Interests", which had no understanding at all of the American gun market. The new owners, eager to curry favor with the existing Clinton Administration, made public statements in favor of gun control. The American market for Colt firearms completely dried up in protest; the only mitigating factor was that the (foreign) owners of S&W made similar public statements. This did not actually relieve Colt's profitless misery, but perhaps it did help to spread the blame if only because S&W's 2000 official, formal accession to the Clinton White House coersion to require (S&W) dealers to accomodate extensive and intrusive Gun Control measures which impacted ALL of their trading, not only those which involved firearms obtained from the (S&W) manufacturer. For example S&W dealers might be proscribed from selling at gun shows.

This anti-gun movement was, of course, fueled by the gun control zealots who resorted to lies in their effort to demonize guns. But here we saw the very people who built the guns supporting those who would undermine their business and their customers' ability to buy their product.

Their customers reacted with acrimonious market boycots.

Where are we now?

Who knows?

One thing is for sure: Colt is looking for a sugar daddy.

According to Jim Shepherd of "The Shooting Wire" (unfortunately, an article available only to subscribers and not available as an independent Internet link), one possible buyer of Colt's Manufacturing Company LLC might have been STI:

Other stories, including the sale of Colt, have dragged on longer than the Florida elections. Today, there's still no definitive resolution to the saga. An arbitrarily high valuation of the civilian side of the business ended that outright sale option in the Colt soap opera.

STI, the company that was ready to buy the civilian operation, has moved on, announcing upcoming production of a single-action revolver called the Texican. It will be aimed at the upper echelon cowboy action competitors, following the same model that has made STI's "race guns" major players in practical shooting.

With a highly successful, manufacturing-oriented business model, STI may, indeed, make a dent in the cowboy market - especially if STI contributes bonus money to cowboy action the way it has in practical shooting. The Texican may find its way into the holsters of the new generation of single-action shooters, despite the fact SASS has continually shied away from the idea of "win money" and sponsorships. STI's move into cowboy action may lead to the recognition that professional shooters exist in cowboy action.

(Link to the "Texican" is mine; it does not provide any "Texican" content, only a reference to its perhaps-future into STI's "Legacy" line of products.)

How 'dead' is Colt?

It's so dead, it hasn't even the organization needed to sell body parts.

If Black Beauty (to invent a parallel) can't even be sold to a glue-factory, that would be unfortunate. That Colt's Manufacturing Company LLC can't be sold to a solid, reputable and prosperous company like STI, which would certainly produce a resurrection 'in a manner reminiscent to Lazarus', is a sad commentary on the Firearms Industry in America today.

Crocodile Hunter Zero - Stingray One

Crocodile Hunter Stever Erwin died (news release September 4, 2006) while filming in the ocean off the Great Barrier Reef.

He apparently approached a Stingray too close, frightening it. The Stingray flipped its tail up, under his ribcage and into his heart.

He was DOA at the mainland.

Erwin is best known for a 2004 incident in which he held his infant son in his arms while feeding ('taunting'?) a crocodile.

Erwin was 44, and is survived by his wife and children, including (apparently) his four-year-old son.

If there is any justice here, it is in that he was survived by the son who was part of his actions which attracted international approbation.

Michael Jackson Take Note.

USPSA Website Member Area Password

For those of you who didn't notice, the "Members' Area" website has been assigned a new Username and password.

According to Rob Boudrie in the Brian Enos Forum:

The old and new password will work concurrently for at least a month or three.

The reason we change the username and password, rather than just the password, is to allow an overlap. We can have multiple username/password pairs, but only one password per username.

I hadn't noticed this. If you haven't either, I encourage you to drag out your September/October 2006 "Front Sight" magazine (Volume 23, Number 5) and look at the very bottom two lines in the center column of Page 1 to get the new "Username" and "Password".

No, I'm not going to give it to you here. This website is open to everyone, not just USPSA members. Changing a secured (or even 'private') website password from time to time is "A Good Thing". I wouldn't presume to compromise USPSA's security measures.

USPSA Presidential Election

According to my Geekish Spidey-Sense (and the USPSA By-Laws), we in the United States Practical Shooting Association are soon to begin the process of electing a new President.


I remember the Presidential Debate which took place at the 1999 Limited Nationals in Las Vegas, Nevada. Michael Voigt was the winning candidate, and he is completing his second term in office.

According to the USPSA By-Laws, the president is elected for a four-year term of office ... which suggests that campaining should begin next year (2007) and the new President should take office in the following year (2007).

ARTICLE 6 - ELECTION OF PRESIDENT AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS: 6.1 The President:

The President shall:

i.) be elected by vote of the individual membership, one vote per member,

ii.) be elected for a term of four years,

iii.) take office on January first following the year of his election,

iv.) serve until his successor is elected and takes office,

v.) be a resident of the United States Region, and

vi.) be Life Member to hold office.

Therefore, by my figuing, we should be looking at a new campaign season in 2007, with the elected president to take office in 2008.

It's not too soon for us to begin thinking about what we want in a new USPSA president. I haven't been thinking about this for too long, so the following list may be a little thin, but it seems to me that the criteria for a new president should include the following (Note that when I speak of "He/Him/His", I do so in the general sense of gender-nonspecificity; I'm certainly not suggesting that a female candidate would be less qualified, and if one should be proposed the future discussions would use the pronouns "She/Her/Hers"):

• The goal of a president should be the advancement and improvement of 'Practical Pistol' (and by extention 'Practical Firearm') competition within the United States of America Region of IPSC.
• Personal/Professional advancement or aggrandizement should not be a reason for his candidacy.
• Candidates should be able to identify and define specific goals which would lead to the advancement of USPSA competition and the organization.
• Milestones and timelines (eg: establish active programs to recruit juniors should result in the increase of membership by x number of new junior competitors by 20**) should be identified and should be a reasonable goal.
• Specific steps to achieve these goals should be defined.
• One of the primary planks in the candidate platform should be a determination to establish and fund new marketting efforts.
• Candidates should be able to define "growth" activities without reference to "creating new competitive Divisions" to "attract new shooters whose (gun, magazines, caliber, etc.) have not yet been separately been acknowledged". We already have so many divisions it is almost impossible to field sufficient competitors in the 'niche' divisions to justify distributing awards. The goal should be to encourage more mainstream shooters, not to diversify to the point of absurdity ... which we may already have done.
• The relationship between IPSC and USPSA has (tentatively) been re-defined to allow USPSA to maintain IPSC Regional certification without ignoring traditional values and legal restrictions in USPSA. The next president should be able to start with this concept and establish a formal relationship without conceding valued USPSA priorities.

Some of the planks I've mentioned may not seem important to you as an USPSA member. Others may not be clear, because I haven't done a good job of defining them.

There may be other planks which you think are important indicators of a viable candidate for USPSA president, but I haven't mentioned.

If any of these situations define your priorities, I encourage you to comment here. The goal is to achieve a consensus of what a viable candidate for USPSA President should look like BEFORE we begin to evaluate the resumes of the candidates.

Also, this may be a good start for candidates to consider what the 'hot button' issues of this election may be, and begin to consider how their own priorities fit with the General Membership.

I know this isn't a "forum" context, as it doesn't really allow for full comentary. However, you may choose to take this concept to another website (such as the USPSA Forum or the Brian Enos Forum) and discuss it there.

You will note that I haven't even mentioned competition rules. It is my expectation that a presidential candidate who meets the criteria already mentioned will also be able and willing to negotiate a reasonable next-version of the USPSA Rule Book with IPSC, to the satisfaction of all concerned parties.

Don't agree?

Tell me why!

PS: I don't want this to sound like a criticism of the tenure of Michael Voigt. He has served honorably and productively for two terms, and among his many accomplishments are both the glastnost ("openness) and perestroika ("restructuring") between IPSC and USPSA.

NB:
I apologise for appearing to suggest a similarity of relations between IPSC and USPSA with those between the "World Community" and USSR. The situations are not similar, but the terminology is remarkably appropriate even though the sociological / political division was much more pronounced for the USSR.

Dean Speir

I received an email from Dean Speirs, who wrote the articles (in The Gun Zone) which inspired the KaBOOM! article.

His comments were pungent (and I mean this in the very nicest sense), to the point, and informative.

In subsequent exchanges, he gave me his permission to reprint his email, which I do here in grateful appreciation.

Well, I must say... and well, again!

A friend found your Jerry-the-Geek KaBoom piece and passed along the link. My blushes!

Coupla comments on that particular blog entry:

1. Gawd!, I wish I'd written "the tendencies of nervous, high-strung or over-stressed pistols to blow up during shooting," so I will add it to the kB! FAQ page somewhere with a (wholly self-serving) cite and link to your blog.
2. Minor erratum:
   

   We saw that in the John Wayne western movie Rio Lobo, essentially a 1970 remake of the 1966 Wayne Western El Dorado

   Delve a tad deeper into IMDb, Brasshopper, and you will learn that both Westerns were very directly remakes of 1959's Rio Bravo, all three being written by Leigh Brackett, directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Wayne.
   
   And if you ever wanna see a more modern "plugged barrel KaBOOM!," rent a copy of The Girl Hunters, in which Mickey Spillane plays his own detective creation!
3. Under the heading of "I was there and I'm surprised that you weren't:"
   

   The KaBOOM! factor was never important until some daring young man (probably Brian Enos) realized that the all-but-forgotten .38 Super cartridge could be used in a pistol which had higher magazine capacity

   I'm shocked... shocked, I tell you... that you don't know that the real culprit here was one Michael McCormick. He was the one who really pioneered the .38 Super in IPSC and almost single-handedly brought beards into vogue on the shooting fields of USPSA. "Chip" was the only one I saw at World Shoot VI in '83 shooting Super. I've since been informed that their may have been one other, but aside from a couple of Europeans shooting "Minor Nine," everyone else I saw was shooting .45 ACP. Chip finished 15th as I recollect, and seven months later, when I was at Steel Challenge, Super had been discovered in a huge way! (Yeah, I know... different power factors factor into this issue.)
4. Continuing in that section:
   

   ...but with a longer cartridge case it had the capacity to legally "make major" ... if loaded with MORE POWDER and which avoided the IPSC rule relegating 9x19 cartridges as "minor power".)

   Now this is very definitely your realm, not mine, but wasn't the "If the headstamp sez 'Luger' or 'Parabellum,' then it's minor!" rule instituted circa '89 or '90, long after hoisted the Super flag?
5. Persevering:
   

   At about the same time, they discovered compensators.

   Again I demur... I'm going up on the name of the South African shooter who actually got the ball rolling at the moment, but the shooter who (again I'll use the word) "pioneered" compensated guns here was Mike Plaxco, and that was circa 1981. WS VI two years later was still ruled by five-inch guns, however.
6. You're getting pretty far afield when you get to the Glock stuff, but then perhaps I'm being "too critical here." But you do have a factual error or three there, mostly in the model designations. But then that'll just allow the Glock Flock to dismiss you as a crank.
   
   Just remember this: Gaston's sole motivation to entering the .40 S&W market was a big "neener neener neener" to Smith & Wesson.
7. Glock has yet to adequately address the "not fully supported caseheads" problem.

I'll sign off here before you go on the nod.

Thanks for the kind words and the links.

If you're ever at a SHOT Show, I'll stand the first round... the second and third as well if Bane continues buying with his usual reckless abandon!

• Dean Speir <DeanSpeir@thegunzone.com>

«-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-»
Formerly Famous Gunwriter / The Gun Zone Maintainer

http://www.thegunzone.com

Annual Review

August, in Geekistan, is the month where we are encouraged to provide input to our Annual Review.

Since my boss has no clue what I do from day to day in the Professional Computer Geek Community, there are a series of categories in which I must Score Highly to achieve a salary increase. Among these are "User Support" and "Initiative". (More on this in a minute.)

I'm already overpaid for doing the thing that I like to do, which makes me a happy feller, so my contribution to this process is probably at the Underachiever level. I don't care. I have enough money to pay my bills and load ammunition for the next club match, and pay match fees. I plan to work until I die, so in happy grasshopper fashion I don't worry all that much about planning for my retirement. Social Security and my Pension, it says in my annual reports, will provide me almost as much money as I spend on rent today. So I'll go live under a bridge, just me and SWMBO and our XL650, and we'll live as long as we live.

Some people, though, seem to have problems.

For example, here's a story of an English Postman, who either got tired of carrying around a bunch of Dead Trees for not discernible reason, or thought his customers (the junk-mail receiving people on his postal route) may not enjoy receiving junk mail any more than he enjoyed delivering it.

At his own expense, and on his own initiative, he had some flyers printed up describing the procedure they could follow if they did not want unsolicited solicitations delivered to their mailslots.

Sounds like Customer Service, right?

But according to his employer (the Royal Mail) has suspended him pending an investigation.

A Royal Mail spokesman said that the Door-to-Door scheme was vital for the company's ability to compete on an equal footing with other delivery organisations. The company delivers a quarter of Britain's unaddressed mail. The spokesman said that the deliveries provided a much-needed service to small businesses and consumers.

Apparently, the British equivalent of UPS and Fed-Ex (which, come to think of it, are probably UPS and FedEx) are such strong competitors for delivery service, the Royal Mail is reduced to Doing The Job That Englishmen Won't Do ... delivering junk. And anyone who undermines that essential function may freely be considered a traitor to The Service.

I hear you saying: "It's The Economy, Stupid!"

Yeah, right. As a "customer" of the U.S. Postal Service, I could do with a whole lot less Dead Trees (Safeway flyers and offers to increase my manhood. Oh wait, that's Email Spam, right?) which go into the ashcan before I unlock my front door.

---------------------

Here's another one, a lot closer to home:

The Firefighting Industry in Idaho must be experiencing a market-slump, because ...

SALMON, Idaho -- A federal firefighter accused of persuading a friend to set a brush fire on the city's outskirts has been charged with conspiracy to commit arson.

Sounds reasonable to me.

If your business is Fighting Fires, and there are no Fires to Fight ... Hey! Demonstrate your initiative by inviting a friend to start a few fires in a worthless clump of brush. You and your cow-workers can Make Good Money and Start Your Own Business by fighting manufactured fires.

Seems reasonable to me. Good training, and that clump of sagebrush was probably just a forest fire waiting to happen anyway. Why not? Heck, they pay you the same whether you're fighting fires or just sitting around the Station House.

But do they give you crediti for Initiative.

NOOooooo!

They want to throw your fanny into the hoosegow. Does that seem fair to your?

Me either.

Of course, I don't live in Salmon, Idaho. If I did, I might have a different attitude. But I live in Oregon, so what do I care if Idaho changes it's State Motto from '"Esto perpetua" (which apparently means "May It Live Forever" ... don't ask me! Like you, I thought it was an American State) to "French Fries, Anyone"?

Excuse me: "Freedom Fries".

So, if you're a firefighter in Idaho, you don't get bonus points on your Annual Review for "Initiative". Seems anti-American to me, but maybe it has to do with the State Motto being a Spanish Saying. I don't know. I don't get paid for this stuff, I just cut&paste the quotes.

It seems to me as if the only way to get ahead is to completely ignore The Rules, which don't make sense to an ordinary man, and just ... do your own thing. Make up your own rules. Don't worry about your Annual Review, they're gonna slaughter you anyway. Might as well have it done under YOUR terms, right?

Here's a story about the Iraqi Army, which seems to be more of a "regional militia" than a "National Army".

These guys are perfectly content to live and work in their home state/province/county/parish (I don't know what they call their area, do you?) but feel that moving to another state/province/county/parish as their AOR (Area Of Responsibility) is just asking too much.

You can't blame them. They know what they signed up for. Maybe nobody else knows, but THEY do! They were asked to "defend the Home Front", and that's just what they're gonna do. That doesn't include fighting people they don't know to defend people they don't know. They're just going to ... literally ... defend their home. They may not have been drafted by their "Friends and Neighbors" (read: people they grew up with, and know personally) but they have a pretty good idea that if they were born in southern Maysan province and are later requested and required to go defend Baghdad .... you gotta ask yourself: "Do I Feel Lucky!"


I'm going to assign this one to the category: "Know and Support your Customer Base", and I'll give them an 8 out of 10 possible points for knowing what their job is and who their customers are.

Okay, that's not on the form.

But it oughta be,.

Croc Match Update

Administrivia, Match Director Announcements & match start time,
Registration Confirmation, (recent addition: links to match scores and photos)

I'll keep this on top of the Blog for a while, for your convenience.

Administrivia:

Entry Form (a PDF file)
Photos and Videos from 2005 Croc Match
Previous Geek Blog about the match.

There's a problem with the TeamCroc website, so the promised registratation confirmation didn't happen. You'll find it here effective (currently) August 24, 8:47pm PST.

Notes from the Match Director, Paul Meier:

Entry fee has been held to $65 for the match, sorry we couldn't get the word out faster.

Sat. morning check in from 8 am on, presentation address at 9 and shooting to follow. Sat. 5 stages with the last 3 left for Sun.

Wait until you see the shirts, they are outstanding. I have a limited number and everyone will want one. To start they are red polos and have a well you'll have to see them. This is the 10 th Anniversary so they are special! Since you know me I don't have to say any more.

Right now I have 96 shooters if everyone shows up. Next week is HELL week for a few of us to put every thing together.

(I don't have photos of the shirts, or I would include them here. Paul, are you listening?)

Registration Confirmation: 2006 Crazy Croc Shooters
(If your name is here, your match registration is confirmed. These are listed in the order in which the entries were received.)

UPDATE:
Since the match has long been completed, I have removed the competitor list from this article. Many people don't like to have their names posted on the Internet, and out of respect for their privacy I have returned to my usual policy of not identifying by full name those who are not 'public images' or who have not already acquired a certain amount of celebrity in other internet sources.

However, you can see the match results here, and visit my Video Shooting Gallery here to see some photos and videos of the match.

-- end of competitor list as of August 24, 2006 --

Brits lose another 'subject'

The Hobo Brasser sent me another one of those "Second Amendment Lists" today. I read it, nodded, thought briefly about blogging it and then thought again. Everybody who reads this blog has probably already read a copy by the time I get it, so why bother?

Then I read the article in the Times Online which suddenly put a whole new face on it.

First, here's the List:

FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE

1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.

2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.

3. Gun Lock: The original point and 'click' interface.

4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.

5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?

6 If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.

7. Free Men Do not ask permission to bear arms.

8. If you don't know your rights you don't have any.

9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

10. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights reserved.

11. What part of "shall not be infringed" do you not understand?

12. The Second Amendment is in place in case they ignore the others.

13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.

14. Guns only have two enemies: rust and liberals.

15. Know guns, know peace and safety. No guns, no peace nor safety.

16. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive

17. 911 - government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.

18. Assault is a behavior, not a device.

19. Criminals love gun control -- it makes their jobs safer.

20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.

21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.

22. You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.

23. Enforce the "Gun Control Laws" we have; don't make more.

24. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.

25. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

26. ".. A government of the people, by the people, for the people..."

Sounds familiar, right? Pretty much a no-brainer for you and me. Cleverly worded, but the message is one we've been hearing and voicing for years.

The link at the top (right-click on the article title) points to the article describing how an East Londoner was rewarded for his refusal to let the Goblins in his neighborhood intimidate him.

Last January he was assaulted by "a gang of youths" (we call them 'Goblins'; in London they call them "Yobs" and feel they are fueled by alcohol and lack of curfews!), who slashed his face and his neck with knives.

He called the police, gave them names and descriptions, and carefully bagged his blood-soaked clothes to the cops would have physical evidence.

The police did ... nothing.

His fiance' called the police EVERY DAY for five weeks after the assault, with the result that the police ignored them, failing even to come pick up the clothes.

This week, the Goblins came calling again. This time they had a gun. They shot him dead on his doorstep, in front of his fiance' and their three-year-old son.

The media finally got into the act, and raised enough of a ruckus that ... the police showed up. They picked up the bag of bloody clothes, which had been sitting in the victim's cupboard for SEVEN MONTHS. Then they went away again.

As of four days ago, the word was that the police were investigating.

The police are investigating their own handling of the original assault.

The fiance's father said:

"I think Peter would still be alive now if the police had acted earlier. We were told the police were overstretched. I said to them ‘Where in the pecking order is attempted murder?’ As far as I am concerned attempted murder is quite a serious thing."

I agree. I bet you agree, too.

Let me see; the Brits made private ownership of guns illegal, to 'combat crime'. Crime still occurred, so they outlawed knives, too.

In response, the Goblins attack this poor man with Knives. When it became clear that the victim wasn't going to yield to their intimidation, and understanding that the police weren't going to arrest them for using one illegal weapon, they used another illegal weapon to murder him.

Chances are they'll skate on the murder charge, too.

You're thinking I'm being too harsh on the police. You may change your mind when you read this paragraph in the article:

It was revealed today that a 14-year-old arrested over Mr Woodhams’ murder this week had also been held in connection with the earlier stabbing.

Still think I'm being too harsh? These police are 7,000 miles away from me, and at that distance I'm not capable of physically pointing a shaking finger in their faces and screaming "J'Accuse!" with spittle flying all over their neat bobby uniforms. Still those yo-yo's in blue are as responsible for that poor man's death as the "14-year old" child ... who the police had ALREADY pegged for another knife assault.

Why wasn't the victim allowed to arm himself, since he was an obvious target? You tell me.

I know what the stinking British Government says about their Unilateral Personal Disarmament.

But I keep thinking about the sad case of British farmer Tony Martin who killed a burglar and spent several years in prison over it. (During his trial, Martin asked what else should he have done when he was invaded in the dark of night by two criminals ... for the second time. The State said he should have "shouted for help". Martin at the time lived on an isolated 350 acre property, nobody could possibly have heard him. The police couldn't possibly have arrived in time to protect him if he had called them, and if they 'chose' to respond. The dead burglar's accomplice was arrested and spent 18 months in jail while Martin was sentenced to life in prison. The government gave the accomplice, who had 34 other offences on his record, 5,000 pounds to finance his civil lawsuit against Martin. Martin was finally released a couple of years ago, but he couldn't go home. He lives in hiding, with the full expectation that his life will be taken by other criminals as soon as they learn where he is. The police have no other way to protect him except to keep him in an 'unofficial prison' for the rest of his life ... which means until the police allow their own security to be breached. How hard can that be?)

The Brits have a shameful history of covering up their own ineptitude when investigating the murder of their subjects (not 'citizens' .... 'subjects' ... see Rule 1, above.) Two years ago, a white 15-year-old Glascow subject, Kriss Donald, was murdered by an Asian Gang. The police chose not to investigate it because it wouldn't be politically correct.

I cite these few cases ... there are literally thousands of them available ... to demonstrate the Hell On Earth that life has become for an honest man in a nation (a former EMPIRE!) gone mad with misguided social engineering.

Going back to the list, the rules hi-lited in red are only those which most directly apply to the East London victim's situation. In truth, all of them apply.

When we ignore these truths, as simple and trite as they seem, we leave ourselves as vulnerable as those poor British Subjects who are forced by their Socialist, Totalitarian government, under threat of lifetime incarceration, to trust their personal safety to the care of an uncaring, incompetent, intrenched bureaucracy.

There's one more thing I have to say, and then I'll go outside and kick the neighbor's cat:

12. The Second Amendment is in place in case they ignore the others.

Gargantuan Gunsite Gossip: V1 #2 1984

Do you remember that I mentioned earlier the problem with reading Jeff Cooper's GGG books?

Yeah, that's right.

There's so much "good stuff" in it you can't hope but bookmark it.

The problem is, you end up with bookmarks on every page. Any attempt to be 'more selective' is bound for disappointment. It's nearly impossible NOT to find memorable comments or essays on every page.

I know this is true. I tried.

Therefore, I'm going to present a few of the 'memorable' quotes here, and on future articles. I'll probably drop a quote or two here and there in blog articles which aren't obviously intended for the purpose too.

I don't do this to enlighten you, although that may happen.
I do this so I can get the toilet paper and kleenex bookmarks out of my book, so it closes the way it should.

Are you ready?

Okay here we GO-o-o-o-o-o-o!

Question: "What is the first principle of knife throwing in combat?"
Answer: "Don't."

Basic self-defense: when you have only one weapon, and it is designed for close-combat, don't throw it away by attempting to turn it into a missile-weapon. You probably aren't trained for or effective in that, and the weapon is certainly not designed for that.

But of course, Cooper said the same thing, but more efficiently and more poetically (if such a word can be implied.)

This is why we're quoting Cooper. The comments are just to separate the quotes.

To shrink from proffered violence is not only dishonorable but futile. Whenever a man, clan or nation makes a policy of submission to deadly threat, social order is consciously subordinated to evil. Thus, the only moral and effective response to a threat is the stop-thrust.

Now the Free World faces the terrible problem of the Iranian bomb-riders. Anywhere -- outside the Soviet Union or China -- an Iranian will blow you up, together with himself, if you do not do what his masters command. And anytime you yield to that command another will be forthcoming -- at whim. We cannot live with that. And we cannot just hope that it will go away.

What do you propose?

It's amazing that the things Cooper said TWELVE YEARS AGO are so pertinent to the world today. But then, that's why we're quoting him today.

When you think about it (if you think about it), this is entirely applicable to the following quote.

It's all about submission, and when we get to the 21st century we'll learn a LOT about that!

"At the heart of socialism lies the fallacy that human problems can be solved by social reorganization."
Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn, of course, was familiar with the very heart of Soviet "Socialism". He wasn't really familiar with the modern Socialism, which is gutting Europe today. He thought that Russia was the very model of the modern Major Socialist Country. But of course, that was Communism and as such was much gentler than 21st Century Socialism.

Except for Stalin's starvation of millions of peasants, of course. The modern Europeans have a long way to go ... but they're working on that.

The Islamofascists are determined to contribute in any way they can.

We'll have to wait for Cooper's Volume II to address that.

x

Bill Gates' Retirement

Bill Gates is retiring, and Dave Letterman presents the MicroSoft tribute to its founder.

Don't miss this hilarious attempt by MS to build a simple 2.7mb WMV file.

I don't know who put this together, but I stole it and installed it in Geek's House Of Weird on Jerry the Geek's Shooting Gallery.

[doink!]

Still Crazy: 2006 Croc Match

I'm going to The Croc Match.

Hear the phrase in your mind.

I'm going to The Croc Match.


Now make it sound like the Disney character, "Goofy Dog".

That [guffaw!] goofy childish enthusiasm, unabashed, heart-felt. This is the way I feel about the Croc Match.


A moment of dignity, please. The proper name for The Croc Match (historically) is:

The Crazy Croc Banzaii Ballistic (You Got Bullets?) Match.

Yup, I've got bullets, yup yup, and I'm going to The Croc Match with a bunch of bullets all loaded up in my LAST 1200 cases after experiencing one too many "lost brass" matches.

I'm not sure whether we'll be permitted to pick up brass on this match, either. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. Mostly, as long as it doesn't slow down the match, you can grab a case or two on most stages.

Mostly, you don't have time or energy. You're too pumped from the endorphin rush of blasting a box (plus) of ammunition downrange all day.

This year's match is scheduled for Labor Day Weekend (September 2-3, 2006) and it may surprise you that you have two days to compete in a match with "only" eight stages.

It sounds more reasonable when you consider that they will require more than 450 rounds to complete the match. If you use the minimum, you can figure on an AVERAGE stage of more than 50 rounds per stage.

Expect some 60+ round stages. It's traditional. And expect to see a lot of steel targets including large arrays ofPepper Poppers and US Poppers, free-standing plates, plates that pop-up IPSC targets, plate racks and at least two Texas Stars. Again ... "You Got Bullets?" Also, the Dundee Boys (Paul and Bill) are big on special props and activators and moving targets. My prediction: you'll see at least one Swinger that moves really, really fast!

Don't show up with only 450 rounds. Don't show up with only 500 rounds, either, because:

1. We don't know the minimum round-count yet. In fact, the guys at the Chahalem Valley Shooting Club ... the Dundee Practical Shooters ... probably don't know, either. It could take over 460 rounds, based on past experience.
2. It only takes one re-shoot of a 50+ round stage to completely screw up your ammo supply. (One year, I reshot a stage 3 times because I kept hitting the cable between a pepper popper and the moving target it activated. About 200 rounds on ONE stage; good thing I brought 800 rounds to that match that day!)
3. Count on at least one malfunction; the biggest hi-round-count match in the PNW, perhaps in America, is tough on guns. You'll lose track of where you were and end up re-engaging at least one 4-target array. Take my word for it.
4. In a major match, if there's any way to screw up -- you'll find it. I always do.

So are we clear now? If you're going to The Croc Match, bring a LOT more ammunition than you think you will need. Best advice I can give you is to bring twice as much as you think you will need. Better to have too much, and not need it, than to bring too little, and need it.

SWMBO and I will be there with something like 1200 rounds. Minimum. A lot of that (over 500 rounds) will be loaded with new, never-been-used, Winchester brass. In case you missed it, Dillon is now selling Winchester brass for the .38 Super at $141/thousand. I just ordered another thousand, because after I finish this match I won't have a lot of brass left.

Oh, by the way, if you haven't already signed up for the Croc Match, the match fee bumped up from $65 to $90 as of August 7th.
NOTE: See the UPDATE at the bottom of the page.

The theme is "Still Crazy" (Crazy Croc Match?) and refers to the Paul Simon song "Still Crazy After All These Years". That's appropriate, because I know you're asking "Hey, Geek, if you're so short on brass and the match costs so much, why are you even going there?"

Well, the title speaks for me. After all these years (ten) of shooting The Croc Match, I'm still crazy about it.

The fact is, I passed up a match (The Columbia Cascade Sectional) this month simply because I wanted to save brass so I could shoot The Croc Match. The Sectional Tournament was a big part of the 2006 Points Race ... class winners are awarded a slot to the USPSA Nationals. Yeah, you still have to pay for it, but you don't have to wait for an opening and you don't have to pay premium prices for it. All that, plus bragging rights. I would rather go to The Croc Match than to the USPSA Nationals, given the need to make a choice.

You may recall that last year I shot the match but SWMBO didn't. Instead, she took my digital camera and spent two days watching OTHER people shoot, and filmed them as they did that. Between here excellent photos and videos, and the contributions of Ron Downs, I ended up with a HUGE library of IPSC Video footage and Still-photos. I spent much of the rest of 2005 pumping the match with videos of The Croc Match, including The Jungle Run (which must be experienced to be believed, but the videos go far in providing the 'look and feel' of the stages.)

However, I've always felt guilty about making SWMBO shoot pictures, while I shot targets, so this year I have been determined to sign us up for the match -- both of us -- even if we're so short of brass that I may have to fall back to a back-up gun (probably the excellent STI Edge in 10mm, even though I can't really see the sights) if we run short of ammunition for the STI .38 Supers.

Note to The Hobo Brasser: Yeah, I hear you out there in Cyber-land, talking loud about how I should be ashamed of my selfish self. Well, I don't need your encouragement to feel shame. If one of us finishes the match with the same gun used at the start, it will be SWMBO. I don't expect to win my class anyway so I may as well admit that I'm there for the sport, not for the competition (which is fierce!)

For a look at last year's match, you can see blog entries of Yong Lee's winning performance on Stage 5: The Doors, Junior Stephan Kemper's Jungle Run, and a summary of stages one through five as well as stages six through eight.

The Jerry the Geek's Video Shooting Gallery has even more photos and videos of the 2005 Croc Match, so you can see what you may be face this year. (Videos are thick here.)

You can still sign up for this match. Here is the entry form. (I just sent in my entry today, one for me and one for SWMBO.)

And if you don't sign up, you don't get your picture taken!

UPDATE: August 24
I just received an email from Bill Marrs, one of the Croc Match organizers. He informs me that the 'fee increase for late entries' has been waived. Everybody pays $65!

At last count, they have 90+ entries. Last year they very much wanted to have over 115 competitors, and I suspect their goal is even higher this year.

The Columbia Cascade Section has hosted a LOT of Major Matches this year, including the Area 1 match and the USPSA Multi-Gun Nationals. Add to that the Columbia Cascade Sectional and the Single Stack Tournament, local shooters have had four Major Matches in less than two months ... and we still have the Croc Match and the Glock Match (alliteration is coincidental, I'm sure) to go before the end of the season.

My guess is that "out of town" sign-ups have been as heavy as previous years, but local shooters are finding this a VERY expensive competitive season.

The Croc Match has been scheduled as early as May in some previous years, and the Sectional as late as September. That helped spread out the season, oftern providing no more than one Major Match per month -- or, to look at it another way, per paycheck.


I can't find a competitor list, or a web site for registration confirmation (which is suggested on the entry form), but I expect to see that locals are in the minority at this match. Which means that if you've never been to a Croc Match before, this is your best chance to compete in the biggest high-round-count match in the country where there are short lines to the rides!

You can't find that at Disneyland.

Hobo Brasser

New recurring topic: humor from The Hobo Brasser.

Our new Supermarket near our house has an automatic water mister to keep the produce fresh. Just before it goes on, you hear the Sound of distant thunder and the smell of fresh rain.

When you approach the milk cases, you hear cows mooing and witness the scent of fresh hay.

When you approach the egg case, you hear hens cluck and cackle and the air is filled with the pleasing aroma of bacon and eggs frying.

The veggie department features the smell of fresh buttered corn.



I don't buy toilet paper there any more.

I offer this because, like toilet paper, it's cheap and convenient.
But not always delicate.

Administrivia

Just to keep you updated on what's happening at Chez Geek:

SIDEBAR:
I've removed "Matt Burkett's Shooting Thoughts" from the sidebar. The last past was October, 2005. Apparently Matt hasn't had a thought since then, and while that's okay by me it doesn't make sense to link to Plymouth Rock when nobody has a reason to go there. Those who are interested can do an Internet Search, which may bring them to this article, from which they can go read whatever they find.

Future Posts: Cooper's Corner
I usually just rant here, as you may have noticed, or talk about The Church Of What's Happening Now.

But once in a while I Get An Idea, and follow it up.

The last time this happened, I posted three or four Kipling poems. I did that because I had been buying and reading Kipling books, and I was very impressed with what I found there.

Problem was, nobody else was buying. I got a dozen hits on the articles, and interest quickly dropped off.

However, a few weeks ago a couple of months ago way back when I mentioned that I was going to buy the 2-volume set of Jeff Cooper's Gargantuan Gunsite Gossip books, and I did, and I've been reading them.

In the process, I kept finding cogent comments, phrases and entries which I found particularly interesting. So about a quarter through Volume I, I began stuffing bookmarkers on those pages with the thought that I might quote them in future nothing-happening-here-but-don't-move-on moments.

The trouble is, by the time I got halfway through the first volume, I had so many bookmarks stuffed into the book it was greatly increased in volume. (Pun intended.)

Bigger problem: When I'm reading in bed, I stuff the book with kleenex. Well, that's what disposable, plentiful, and close at hand.

When I'm reading in The John, I stuff the book with toilet paper.

Thankfully, it's unused TP.

But the book is becoming cumbersome, so the next time I'm moved (sorry!) to include a blogmeat article, you'll be treated to a bunch of direct quotes from the book.

Hopefully, you'll be urged (sorry!) to buy the books for yourself, because what I'm going to include is just the tip of the iceberg. Or the top of the pile. (Sorry!)

While reading the books, I've been impressed that the periodic contributions presented a micro-view of the issues of the day. A glimpse of history, so to speak, because the first book starts with the Guns&Ammo articles of 1981.

The other impression is that Cooper's Corner (as the recurring column was called in the G&A editions) constitutes the first Blogger.

You may compare the series with Ruark's columns in Field and Stream, which went on and on for 20 years and resulted in such published volumes as "The Old Man And The Boy". You may compare them unfavorably. But they weren't the same thing.

You can talk about O'Connor (The American Rifleman), and Skeeter Skelton (I miss all of these excellent shooting-sports writers too much!), but they aren't the same thing as Cooper's Corner.

Cooper didn't write vignettes, as the others did. He wrote stream-of-consciousness. He wrote short, fragmented concepts. He didn't write short stories. Much of what he offered was highly opinionated, confrontational, opinionated and rarely Politically Correct. (He got booted from G&A, came back, refused to kneel, was ultimately booted For All Time. ) I often disagreed with Cooper, occasionally was outraged, found him barbaric and/or offensive ... and upon rereading for the third time, I still do all of the above.

But I found him eminently readable.

Go to the sidebar. You'll find the link to his current writings. I still read him every month, even though he's become less productive in his later years and we are lucky to find a new article every season.

How often today do you have the opportunity to read a man who still writes in the Editorial "WE" (even though he 'gave it up' in 1991)? And how often, within that vanishingly small community (Does Buckley use "WE" any more? I think not!) do you find it so difficult to determine when he is using the Editorial "WE" and when he is using the Imperial "WE". I think it is trending to the latter, and I don't consider it A Bad Thing.

After all, The Man DID start IPSC.

Bearing in mind that he increasingly distanced himself from the trend toward gamesmanship which he found so egregious in the '80s and the early '90s, and did in fact sever all connection to IPSC in the late '90s because the sport had lost, in his opinion, all connection to the concept of "Practical" competition, his is still and shall for evermore be ...

The Guru

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Even though I went to The Dark Side three years ago, I did so because I just couldn't see Iron Sights any more. I would have preferred to compete in Limited 10, which is the class in which I made B rating in 1999 (before I couldn't read without glasses any more.)

I would like to think that Cooper, in his eighties, would use a red-dot sight if he could just get past his outrage.

On the other hand, why should he?

After all, he's right.

KaBOOM!

I've been shooting IPSC for a long time. While I'm just barely good enough not to quit, I have long ago learned that what I see and what I learn are often more interesting than what I do.

One of the things I have learned is that ISPC competition usually involves a LOT of shooting with many different kinds of pistols. Not all of them were originally designed for this kind of continuous shooting.

One of them is the Glock.

Another is the .38 Super, as produced by just about anybody.

I know what you're thinking. You've read the title of the article, you got this far, and your knee-jerk reaction is probably one of the following:

1. Yeah, but Glock fixed that!
2. Yeah, but STI (SV, name your own favorite manufacturer of .38 super pistols) fixed that!
3. It wasn't the gun, it was reloading brass which had been used too many times!
4. It wasn't the gun, it was using the wrong powder!

Okay, you may be right. But These Things Still Happen, and I want to spend a little time on IPSC History so indulge me a while, okay?

(In keeping with the "These Things Still Happen" concept, I'll probably be telling you a few things you already know. There may be some folks who don't already know this stuff, and I want to use this opportunity to put a bug in their ear.)

This will be a certified Geek-Length Article, and I can do that because I'm a big mouth. You are an honored and invited guest, but everything I do is for me.

One of the things I do for me is the sidebar links. You may think I put them there to draw your attention to information resources which you may find interesting. In reality, I put them there so I have a quick-link to information resources which I find interesting. As such, I spend some time almost every day revisiting them, and often I learn from them.

One of the interesting links I have included is The Gun Zone, the love child of veteran gunzine writer Dean Speir. I've delved into TGZ from time to time, but never really surfed it thoroughly. I devoted some time to that pleasant burden recently and found the site to be rich in knowledge, experience, wisdom (not the same think as knowledge or experience ... it depends on the man), and information. Your enjoyment of the information depends in turn on whether you click on the many links provided in the text of Speir's articles.

Reading his lead article, I found a reference to what Speir calls kB!. To my delight, I found this to be a fairly rigorous and eminently informative white paper about the phenomenon which I have, in various other writings, referred to as "KaBOOM!" ... the tendencies of nervous, high-strung or over-stressed pistols to blow up during shooting.

There are a lot of reasons for guns to blow up.

One of the more esoteric reasons is that you have jammed your rifle barrel in the dirt, and thus plugged the barrel with said dirt. (We saw that in the John Wayne western movie Rio Lobo, essentially a 1970 remake of the 1966 Wayne Western El Dorado, in which Dirty Sheriff "Blue Tom" Hendriks gets shot in the leg in the Shootout Scene and uses his Winchester Rifle as a crutch until he is confronted by the vengeful Amelita. Note to Self: never use your Winchester as a crutch, especially if you've slashed the face of a fiery Hispanic Ho.)

There are many less exciting ways to get a KaBOOM! out of your competition gun, though.

Historically, the KaBOOM! phenomenon wasn't a big factor in the early days of IPSC.

Sure, it was sometimes possible to get a double-charge in your .45 acp 1911 if you were using one of the flat-leaf shotgun powders, such as Alliant Red Dot. But most of us who used this type of powder were more likely to use the slower-burning powders such as Green Dot. And sometimes folks using Hercules Bullseye (a fine-grain spherical powder) could overcharge, too.

.38 Super-Face
The KaBOOM! factor was never important until some daring young man (probably Brian Enos) realized that the all-but-forgotten .38 Super cartridge could be used in a pistol which had higher magazine capacity (akin the the 9x19 nine millimeter parabellum, but with a longer cartridge case it had the capacity to legally "make major" ... if loaded with MORE POWDER and which avoided the IPSC rule relegating 9x19 cartridges as "minor power".)

At about the same time, they discovered compensators.

This was a device which could be attached to the muzzle of the barrel. It was a steel cylinder with holes cut in the top. The weight helped keep the muzzle from bouncing with recoil after each shot ("Muzzle-Flip"), but the holes in the top allowed excess gasses to exhaust and, similar to a rocket motor, exerted an "equal but opposite" force DOWNWARD to reduce the muzzle-flip even further. The result was that you could fire a Major Power round and the muzzle pretty much stayed on-target.

Major Power, fast double-taps; what more could a young IPSC competitor wish for?

Well, he could wish to retain his boyish good looks without facial scaring, because the compensator required a LOT of gunpowder to provide the excess gasses, and competitors were loading more and more very fast powder into their long .38 super cartridges for the sole purpose of jetting the exhaust through the compensator.

The result of this daring experimentation was that the .38 super cartridge, which had not originally been designed for such high pressures, was sometimes unable to contain all of those excess gasses. Something has to give, and occasionally the case split laterally along the web of the case base. The gasses vented against the breach, which in reaction opened sufficiently to vent them up and back resulting in what has colorfully been termed "Thirty Eight Super-Face".

What this is, is that the hot gasses, the burning powder fragments, and pieces of brass from the bursting cartridge case blew UP and BACK to where the competitors face was conveniently (or not, depending on your point of view) waiting.

Facial skin is not designed to endure this kind of physical assault. While I never heard of anyone being actually blinded while acquiring a .38 SuperFace, I strongly suspect this is only because of the mandatory requirement to wear protective glasses. However, full-face motorcycle helmets were never mentioned in the USPSA Rule Book, so a lot of this hot crap scrap found fertile ground for flesh-rending and burning into the underlying musculature. The result was pain, secondary infection, facial disfigurement and a few IPSC competitors who decided that they would grow a beard to hide the scars.

Super Rob and I both wear beards, but it isn't necessarily because we have Super-Face. We're just styling.

The other guys, well, they're doing what they can to look 'normal'.

Eventually, the .38 Super shooters realized that there were a couple of things they could do to avoid this unfortunate down-side to hi-cap/major-power expediency:

1. use slower-burning powder, to avoid pressure spikes
2. install a barrel with a fully supported chambers, to help the case retain the pressure

Handgun manufacturers, especially STI and SV, built their business on .38 Super competition guns with fully supported chambers.

The cartridge manufacturers chipped in to the obvious marketting message, and provided a case with a thicker web.

These cartridge (not ammunition) manufacturers such as Winchester, Remington/Peters and others completed the third leg of the .38 super Road to Salvation.

• Slow-burning powder allowed the generation of high gas-pressure to make the compensators work, without generating it in the first few thousandths of a second after ignition.
• The fully supported barrels (now standard on such competition-specific guns such as the STI Competitor) helped hold the pressure in without stressing the case unduly.
  
• the stronger case design accepted more of the pressure burden, and not only prevented lateral case-splits but helped contain longitudinal splits in the case.

We were saved! No more 38 Super-Face! We can go back to developing hot loads to make major power, and we don't have to chance facial disfigurement and injury to hands because your ammunition may cause your gun to blow up!

Glock and the .40 Slow and Wimpy
Then Glock introduced the Glock 22 in .40 S&W cartridge, with performance riveling the .45acp and magazine capacity riveling the 9mm guns.

Unfortunately, instead of chambering the strong Glock 21 .45acp gun for the smaller .40 S&W cartridge, they chose to chamber the weak Glock 17 9mm gun for the more powerful (and higher pressure) .40 S&W cartridge.

Well, it was a marketting thingie.

The consequences: KaBoom!, The Next Generation!

What are we looking at here?

1. Barrels without fully supported chambers.
2. Barrels which are intentionally built 'loose', so they can accomodate cartridges with varying diameters (eg: "you can shoot anything in a Glock!")
3. Handguns deliberately built on a 'weak' frame, instead of the readily available 'strong' frame.

Perhaps we're being too critical here.

Or perhaps not.

Glock was at a decision point. They could use a design which was stronger than the (new, relatively untested) .40 S&W cartridge ... the frame designed for the powerful .45acp cartridge .. or they could use a design which was lighter, less robust, but cheaper to make and intended for the poodle-shooter 9x19 (9mm Luger, 9mm Parabellum, etc.) cartridge.

Let me see: over-engineer for safety, or under-engineer for profit. What are the chances that somebody will over-load a .40 S&W round? What to do, what to do ...

Ultimately, Glock built the Glock 22 on essentially the same frame as the Glock 17.

MAYBE this decision was based on the lesser amount of material used in the 9mm Glock 17 as opposed to the 45acp Glock 22 21 [corrected].

MAYBE this decision was based on the fact that the cartridge diameter was closer to the 9mm (.35*") than the .45 (.45*"), so they had less machining to deal with.

My guess is that they were looking at the ejector placement.

The .40 S&W cartridge uses a small primer, as does the 9mm.

The .45acp uses a large primer.

The ejector is sited in the frame relative to the primer diameter.

Could it have been as simple as a reluctance to change the tooling on the Glock 22 to a position more appropriate to the Glock 17?

I don't know, but essentially the major difference between the Glock 17 (9mm) and the Glock 21 (.40S&W) is the barrel. No retooling for the rest of the gun is needed or desired, except for the stamped model and caliber markings.

Go look at the cited links for the Glock 17 (9mm), Glock 21 22 [corrected] (.40S&W) and the Glock 22 21 [corrected] (.45acp). What you will see, if you look at weight, is that the Glock 21 is several ounces heavier. More robust. Perhaps even more able to resist both recoil and internal pressures.

Except that the as-issued Glock 21 22 [corrected] had the same barrel design; the chamber was not fully supported.

Add to that the popularity of the new Clays powder, which was working just fine for both 9mm and .38 super ammunition, and as it was the new hot powder-de-jour there was a lot of of forty-caliber ammunition loaded with Clays.

I refer you now to one of my favorite reloading pages: The Reloading Pages of M.D. Smith.

Smith's pages are especially notable for two links:

1. His article on "Light Loads in Big Cases Can Blow Up!", (which curiously he originally created 10 years ago as part of his "reloading for the 10mm" page), and
   
2. his "Powder Burning Rate Chart".
   

Here's a reproduction of his top ten fastest commercially available gunpowders:

1. R-1 Norma

2. N310, Vihtavuori

3. Bullseye, Alliant

4. N312, Vihtavuori

5. Solo 1000, Accurate

6. Clays, Hodgdon

7. Red Dot, Alliant

8. N318, Vihtavuori

9. Hi-Skor 700X, IMR

10. N320, Vihtavuori

(Curiously, and appropos of nothing at all, I use the VV N320 as my powder-of-choice for the 10mm.)

This is beginning to look familiar, isn't it? We have (a) a new cartridge, which hasn't been through the years of testing that more familiar cartridges (such as 9mm, .45acp, etc.) have experienced ... and which the .38 super failed miserably until the case was strengthened!; (b) 'HOT' loads (pressure spikes from fast-burning powders designed for robust cases/chambers), and (c) hambers which are not fully supported.

But in the case of the .40 S&W, we have one more factor:

The literature provided the reloader with an optimal Over All Length (OAL) which was predicated on slower burning powders. When you push the powder charge in an attempt to be 'as good as the forty-five', you need just a little more room and a little less grip on the bullet to slow down that pressure spike.

BTW, here's an interesting item. One of the ways Glock moved to avoid these problems was administrative. Glock does not recommend reloaded ammunition. In point of fact, if you use reloaded ammunition, it voids their warranty!

I had thought that this was another 'yester-year' thing, but in a conversation with a prospective new IPSC-shooter last month, I mentioned that he may find competition prohibitively expensive, considering the cost of store-bought ammo. If he tries IPSC and decides he likes it enough to continue, he may want to consider the "Roll Your Own" solution. It's expensive to get into, but in the long run a new loading press pays its way.

His response was to tell me that he couldn't load his own ammunition because the Glock Warranty forbids it, yatta yatta yatta. I was nonplussed. I couldn't believe that clause was still on the books.

And then I reconsidered.

If you have no confidence in your own product, you can either beef it up or let your lawyers remove your liability concerns.

You will notice that neither STI or SV ( and probably not Colt, S&W, Ruger, Beretta, Sig, Kahr, Taurus, Star, or most other pistol manufacturers you can name) demonstrate so little confidence in the strength of their product.

Yet, people keep buying the ugly duckling.

Ya gotta wonder.

We now return control to your computer.

How do you solve a problem like KaBOOM!
In the case of the Glock/.40S&W combination, four changes were required:

1. Fully supported chambers. It took Glock YEARS to make this design change ... which essentially reduced their manufacturing process by the one step which made the cut in the chamber-end of the barrel, but to take that step implied some falacy in design, some responsibility for problems ...
2. Reloaders had to find a slower burning powder than Clays. Today those who use Clays powder for .40S&W are relying on the other changes to the reloading process, either out of a desire to demonstrate machismo or a vote of confidence in the cartridge "anyway";
3. Slower burning powders often mean that you can more completely fill the case. This does have a slight effect in reducing pressure spikes, and it is offered only in an effort to ease the pain of the last, most difficult revelation which was painfully (literally) slow in coming;
4. Longer OAL than lighter factory-produced loads.

I don't have the recommended OAL for 'hot' Shorty Forty loads immediately at hand, but even if I bothered to look them up I wouldn't present them here. I'm not inclined to make myself liable for lawsuits by recommending a load, because I don't have the experience in my own reloading and because you never know how someone else will take your perfectly good load data and switch the numbers around to their own detriment and your own legal exposure.

But the Common Wisdom became that ammunition which was loaded longer didn't spike as badly, and this was probably one of the most productive reloading changes for this caliber, in terms of reducing the KaBoom! factor ... after the introduction of the fully supported chamber.

Yes, the M.D. Smith admonition about "Light Loads in Big Cases Can Blow Up!" was a bit of a misdirection. It probably doesn't apply with this cartridge. It probably doesn't even apply to the Evil 10mm cartridge (which I load to .40S&W power levels and have fired tens of thousands of rounds with no problems at all. This may in part be due to the much more robust design of he 10mm cartridge compared to the .40S&W case ... which is why I insisted that the STI Edge I bought be chambered in 10mm.)

War Stories:
I can't leave this subject without telling at least one story.

At a Tri-County Gun Club match several years, I witnessed first-hand a certifiable Glock/Forty KaBoom!

Friend "Dangerous Dan" came to a match with a borrowed Glock 22. The ammunition, also, was borrowed. While engaging targets on then-Bay 5, he suffered a KaBoom! Experience.

Dan had been competing in IPSC for many years. He was primarily a Revolver shooter, but while engaging the "Christmas Tree" classifire the previous month he had a high-primer situation, which required about five minutes of banging the revolver against the prop to get the cylinder open and change his load. He was ready to try the pistol in favor of his beloved revolver, which lead him to borrow the "hot, new Glock Forty".

Smack in the middle of the stage, there was a strange KaBOOM! sound, and Dan started Dancing.

He shifted the pistol from a two-handed grip to his left hand. Then back to his right hand. Left. Right. Finally he was able to hand the pistol off to the Range Officer, move back a few steps, drop to his knees and sink his hands into the cool, soothing mud of a puddle. Thank Goodness this happened during the Spring season when the range abounded with convenient mud-puddles!

After several minutes of said salve-application (and not a little creative profanity), Dan arose in a manner not unlike Godzilla from the mud with reddened dripping hands and retrieve the offending Glock from the Range Officer.

It took a while to remove the magazine; it was busted up pretty good.

A couple of tries were required to rack the Glock Slide; the case was badly bulged.

The case was also showing a latitudinal split along the edge of the (unsupported) chamber.

The magazine was toast .. burned, partly melted at the top, and the baseplate was blasted out along with the spring and the entire ammunition load.

After he had an hour or so to cool down -- literally -- Dan came back and finished the match with the same gun. Miraculously, there was no fatal damage to the pistol. Or to Dan, although he was obviously in pain from the flash-burns on his hands.

Later, Dan bought his own Glock .. in 10mm, which was the only Glock I have ever fired (I didn't like the way it fit my hand, or the muzzle-flip, but that may have been because he was loading the cartridge hotter than I though was necessary.)

I never did learn what he did with the magazine; at least, the parts which were left unmelted.

UPDATE: February 19, 2007
Reader CW notes that I have, from time to time in this article, entered incorrect Glock model numbers for pistols in .40 S&W and .45 ACP calibers.

I have found an excellent internet Glock resource in The Glock FAQ, and I am correcting my errors.

Essentially, the standard model in .40 S&W is the Glock 22 (not 21) and in .45 acp is the Glock 21 (not 22). Corrections have been identified by striking through the old text and entering the correct model in bold, followed by the notation [corrected].

In reviewing this article, I noted that several reference links to specific Glock models are no longer functional, because the www.glock.com website referenced no longer is present. I've replaced these links with similar webpages from Glock FAQ. You can see a summary of the physical characteristics of various Glock models here, also a Glock FAQ source.

I also added a link to Jeff Maass' IPSC reloading page, but I note with sorrow that he is retiring this website. If the link on "Shorty Forty" does not work, please let me know. I doubt I can find another internet reloading resource of such high quality and reliability, but I'll try. (I'll also see if I can contact Jeff to solicit his suggestions. This is a sad day for reloaders, when Jeff takes down his website.)

I appreciate the feedback and the corrections. It's embarassing to demonstrate my ignorance, but it's worse to confuse the reader. This article is one of the most often read because of internet searches on the subject; it should at least be accurate. I count on the readers to correct errors, because you are my editors.

Please feel free to report broken links. My email address is written on the tailgate of my virtual pick-up truck at the bottom of the website page. Or just comment on the offending article. I'll find it. After all, I found CW's comment on this six-month-old article the same day he posted it.

My thanks and gratitude to CW and Glock FAQ.

IPSC Video - Dundee 7/2006 SWMBO

I've not posted for a couple of days, because I'm working on an extended article about the "KaBOOM!" factor in IPSC competition.

Be prepared to be alternately bored and outraged.

In the meantime, it occurs to me that I haven't been posting many IPSC Videos lately, so rather than do a "BlogMeat" post I have provided you with a nice little shoot-em-up.



In this video, SWMBO is engaging targets including lots of steel (Pepper Poppers, US Poppers and plates) plus mostly appearing or moving IPSC targets. It's a stage which challenges the shooter to move quickly, pick up a pre-positioned pistol (rather than the typical draw-from-the-holster scenario), and engage a wide variety of target types.

It's a challenging stage, and I thought SWMBO handled it very well. The timing of target engagment was so good it deserves to be set to music; I chose the Miami Vice theme, because that instrumental theme is almost an iconic representation of breathless, heart-stopping action.

Plus, I'll never get the image of flamingos and bikini-clad beauties out of my head every time I hear this theme.

Seems appropriate to me.

Field Strip The 1911 Colt 45 - and other stuff

This is a cogent set of instructions on how to clean the 1911 pistol, and its magazine.

I wish this had been plainly available when I first started pistol shooting. Instead, I had to learn it the hard way.

If you're a tyro, a word of caution: the instructions say NOTHING about cleaning parts other than the breech face and the extractor. (Note: every part needs to be cleaned with a solvent such as Hoppe's #9 Powder Solvent, and lightly oiled. If you're not sure what "lightly oiled" means, just oil the heck out of everything you can see, and wipe it with a clean, dry cloth. And if you forgoe the "wipe with a clean, dry cloth" part, you won't hurt a thing except the pistol may tend to make your hand oily, and make it hard to hold onto the gun when firing it. Use your best judgement.) Also, the instructions don't show all of the parts (noticably missing: barrel bushing, firing pin, there are lots more), they don't make it clear when you change from disassembly to reassembly.

About reassembling the firing pin: there's a spring around it. One end of the spring is loose, the other end is tight. The way to know how to reassemble the spring around the firing pin is to check whether the spring comes off easy or tends to hang on to the firing pin. You want to reassemble them so the spring tends to hang on to the firing pin. You'll probably want some kind of pointy pin-pusher (a 1/8" punch works best) when removing the "Firing Pin Retaining Device" (also known as the "Firing Pin Stop", and "that darned flat piece of steel that comes out easy but goes back together after I've let the firing pin fly out of the gun and under the sofa a couple of times").

Come to think of it, it's probably a good idea to check out The Sight's 1911 .45ACP Use and Care Page. The link to Tuley's page is there, along with links to several other websites which help you understand how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble the 1911.

One helpful link is The Sight 1911 Cut-Aways. Here you can see all the parts in correct relative positioning, along with pictures of each part and the correct name for them. If you're a 1911 owner, I highly recommend that you study this 'phantom view' schematic and learn the names of the parts. It makes it a lot easier to talk to your gunsmith if you use the same language as he does. This will come in handy when, after disassembling and cleaning your 1911, you discover you have either (a) failed to understand how to put them back together, (b) discovered that you're missing a part ... which may or may not be found under the sofa ... or (c) ended up with parts still on the coffee table.

Some pointers, taken from personal experience, would include:

When re-installing the Slide Stop, make sure you align the aft end with the SMALL notch on the slide, and push the slide stop all the way in until it goes *click*. You can halfway install it, and the gun will work. That is, it will work until the slide stop works it way out again, and sometime when it is least convenient the slide stop will fall on the ground. Immediately after that, the slide assembly .. including the barrel, and the loaded round in the barrel ... will also fall on the ground. You can find the slide assembly easily enough, but (trust me on this) it doesn't do you a bit of good without the slide stop holding it together with the part that has the trigger and the hammer.

Just thought I would mention that.

Another thing is Tuley's caution that it takes a competent and experienced gunsmith to 'tune' an extractor. Not so. Any bozo can tune an extractor. You don't even need any tools, just three rocks.

Here's how you do it.

First, using a high-powered magnifying glass, carefully examine the 'hook' on the muzzle-end of the extractor. If is badly worn or ... more likely ... one corner of the 'hook' has chipped off, the extractor is worthless and must be replaced. The replacement hook, however, may need to be tuned. That is, if you can FIND a replacement extractor. This is a part which should be considered a "consumible", so you should always carry an extra one in your range bag. You don't have a range bag? You don't have a replacement extractor?

You're screwed. Have a nice day.

No, I'm just kidding. Let's assume the extractor isn't broken; it has just lost it's 'tune'.

Remove the extractor from the pistol, and find three rocks. Two of them can be as small as 3/4" in diameter, the third should be at least 2" diameter. That's the "hammer".

(Note: if you actually have a brass hammer and a vice with you, you don't need the following instructions. In fact, if you are that prepared, you probably have a replacement extractor which has been pre-tuned to your gun, and everything that follows is not necessary. Good On You, Cobber!)

Put the first two rocks on a flat surface, no more than 2-1/2" apart. Bridge them with the extractor, with the point of the hook facing up. (If you don't know what the hook is, the "point of the hook" is, or what the "extractor" is, this operation is not for you. Go home and start boxing up your 1911 to send to your favorite gunsmith.)

(Actually, that should be your first and best choice, but shooters are ever optimists despite repeated experiences which invariably come to "Bad Ends".)

Take the third rock ... "The Hammer" and pound the unsupported center of the extractor a couple of times until you're pretty sure you have bowed it a little bit.

Note: if the extractor and at least one of the rocks has bounced off the table and you can't find it, never mind. That's just John Moses Browning's cure little way of telling you that you're hitting it too hard. Also, you'er a dork and should leave the gunsmithing to someone who has at least replied to a "Be A Gunsmith" advertisement he has seen in a magazine.

If you can find your extractor, re-install it and put an EMPTY cartridge case in the slide, under the hooks of the extractor. If it stays in place, it MAY work for you. In that case, reassemble your 1911 and go back to the match.

If it doesn't stay in place, start over and do all the steps until that requrement is satisfied.

Chances are, even if you do correctly tune your extractor, it won't last long. That is a good indication that it has lost its temper. (No, that doesn't mean it has become cranky and intractable; that means that the metal is too soft to retain the "springiness" necessary for it to do its job of extracting brass out of the chamber.) It may never have been tempered correctly, so you're reduced to the point of having to (assuming you're an IPSC competitor) re-tune your extractor between every stage.

I realize that is an unlikely event, but this actually happened to me in the 2001 Dundee Croc Match, and I made a public laughing stock of myself by going down to the safety table between every stage, finding three rocks (I actually kept them in my pocket after the first time the gun didn't eject the brass; I still have them in my gun safe!) and re-tuning my extractor. However, I did manage to finish the match.

This is probably the best time to mention a few useful habits I have developed in my [mumble mumble] years of IPSC competition.

• Keep spare small parts in your range bag
• Learn how to install them
• If appropriate (eg: extractor, firing pin stop, slide stop) learn how to fit them to your gun
• The moment one of them fails, replace it
• ... then, as soon as practicle, replace the spare
• Know and suck up to a good local gunsmith who competes in the same shooting sports you do. (This is probably not always possible, but strive, STRIVE~!)
• If the part may possibly require fitting to your gun (extractor, firing pin block, etc.), do so and try it out in practice. Make sure it works. Then put it back in your bag and replace it with the original part. That way you'll always know that the replacement part will work.

NOTE: much of this is satire. Much of this is good advice. If you can't tell the difference between satire and good advice, err on the conservative side.

The point of the exercise is, there are some details about small-arms maintenance which may be referrenced on The Internet. Unfortunately, it doesn't always tell you "The Rest Of The Story".

If you're handy with machinery, you may be able to translate the usually stunted procedural descriptions to your advantage. But if you're just another Bozo (as am I), you will probably find that you have caused more problems than you have fixed.

You know yourself best. And the best advice is to find a competent gunsmith who can make SURE you are using a safe, reliable firearm.

Or, you can do this (5mb download)

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UPDATE: 8/30/2006

I've received comments from the owner of the website www.bobtuley.com which was the source of the original article and owner of the first photo displayed above. He notes that I have misspelled his name, which I have corrected. He also notes that I have used his photo without permission, for which I humbly apologise. Finally he tells me that a "casino site" will "pop up" on this webpage. I have no idea how, why or where that happens, as I cannot get it to popup at all. If you have had that experience, please email me (see the email address at the very bottom of this page) with enough information so that I can find it and remove it. It is not my policy to allow commercial messages here, let alone deliberately insert the dispicable popup code.
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UPDATE: 07-JUL-08
(H/T Michael Bane Blog)

Thanks to Lucky Video and Splodetv.com, we have a live-action video (animation, y'know) of what goes where, when, when assembling a 1911-type pistol.

I love this stuff!

(No, I don't have permission from them to link to the demonstration. Since it can only provide more traffic to the website, I doubt they will mind.)

The General, Redux

Maybe you don't remember Mike Jones.

I do.

I first wrote about him the week of his death. The post was intended to tell the story of one of the exceptional people I have met during my IPSC career, but it ended up being a personal eulogy of a man whom I had come to love and respect.

This, even though I had never seen him outside of the environs of a shooting range, with the exception of one time when I met him in a mall parking lot to deliver some ammunition which I had reloaded for him. (He insisted on paying me $100 for 1,000 rounds of .45 acp ammunition, using his brass, even though this exceeded my expenses. He refused to be petty and, while he accepted that I was reloading for him as a personal favor I think he felt uncomfortable not giving me SOMETHING in recognition of my time and labor.)

I considered him not only a respected senior citizen of our community, but something of a mentor. More, I appreciated his contribution in being the driving force which brought IPSC competition to Oregon.

Late that Summer, the Practical Rifle group at Tri-County Gun Club (his home range) initiated a First Annual Mike Jones Memorial Rifle Match, in his honor.

This weekend was the scheduled Second Annual Mike Jones Memorial Rifle Match, also in his honor. (It has been renamed from the "Classic Battle Rifle" match.)

I don't know much about the match ... I received the announcement, but I see that I have failed to forward it from my office email to my home email address. I don't compete in Practical Rifle (also known as "Tactical Rifle", at least at TCGC), so I can't give you details. However, if memory serves me correctly, it was intended to encourage use of 'older' military rifles. The organizers (notably Mike's friend Randy Schleining) even changed the usual practice of forbidding the use of 'ferrous ammunition', made possible by restricting the target selection to cardboard targets rather than the typical mix of cardboard and steel targets.

I'm not SURE whethere Garands were allowed, but I suspect they were. If so, this would have been an excellent opportunity for me to try my Garand in a 'match situation'. That, or my 1903 Springfield, or my .30-40 Krag, either of which (bolt action) rifles would certainly have been acceptable and perhaps even competitive.

I used the excuse that "I'm too old to shoot Tactical Rifle", but I admit that I'm a bit shamed by The General's invariable willingness, even into his 70's, to go to the match every month and compete, with a variety of rifles including his modified Garand, with the younger men.

When I say "Modified Garand", I refer to a conversation which I had with The General a year or two before he DEROS'd to a better place. Apparently, somebody will modify an M1 Garand to accept a magazine from an M14. I know that Beretta offers that variation (which they call a "Type E" Garand), but a quick perusal of the Internet doesn't reward my search argument of "Garand With Magazine" except to refer me to websites using that term to describe an M-14. (A short discussion of the M1, modified M1 and the M-14 is available here.)

Which, of course, is not accurate. The M1 Garand used the venerable long .30-06 cartridge. The M-14 uses the newer short-case 7.62 Nato (.308) cartridge. I've been tempted a number of times to get an M-14, but just couldn't force myself to pay that kind of money on a 'lesser cartridge'.

Neither could The General. I know more about the Internet, but he knows more about Guns. Not being able to ask him for the name of the modification at the next match is just one more way in which I still miss Mike Jones.

(Photos courtesy Randy Schleining)