I ran into a couple of guys from Manticore Arms at the Rockcastle Bullpup shoot in late September. A few of their designs went home with me and I finally got the photos edited.
And this isn’t a gun part but was in the Bullpup shoot goodie bag along with a Brownells 30rd GI magazine:
I recommend checking out Manticore web site. They design and make interesting things.
Does anyone really need old family snapshots? Pictures of your child as a baby, or of your grandparents on their honeymoon have no monetary worth and nearly no practical value. What can you do with them, besides looking every few years. Would you be OK with government taking away by an arbitrary decree?
We don’t need apples. Pears are close enough and can be used in the same recipes. Would you be OK with apple growing being prohibited?
Nobody needs to read Jonothan Swift. Should the books be destroyed for their supposed advocacy of cannibalism?
When we are robbed of snapshots, apples or books, we are robbed of more than sentimental value — we are robbed of free choice! Applied to guns, the claim that we don’t need them — though faulty in itself — is first and foremost ethically offensive to the core! To have a master decide if you may have a pear but not an apple, or a smoothbore shotgun instead of a rifle, or any other personal aspect of your life is the very definition of slavery. It’s the major component in learned helplessness. When our government officials behave as domestic abusers, it’s time to start wondering why.
The gun banners are right on one thing: weapons are a special case, just not the way they think. I may have a gun that I do not need. It could be less than a wallhanger, just something taking up space in the attic. But that lack of purpose goes away the second somebody wants to rob me of it — defending against brigandage becomes that gun’s primary purpose.
458SOCOM rifles use the standard .223 magazines which hold 10 rounds of the larger ammunition. Does this mean that 10-round .458 magazines would become very popular should the proposed ban go into effect? Their ability to hold 30 .223Rem cartridges would be just an incidental side effect. I suppose that could be made illegal — so a person with a .458 10-rounder could be prosecuted for “constructive possession” if .223 ammo was nearby. All gun laws that try to regulate technical aspects are failures from the get-go. Or maybe they aren’t failures if the intent is admitted to be mass entrapment and victimization of innocent people.
Vepr rifle with 20″ barrel, Troy Battle Ax stock on ITT hydraulic buffer tube, Aimpoint Comp M2, Viridian X5L light/laser, SGM forend. The forend is going to be switched out for the Texas Weapons part shortly. I’d like to move the Magpul RVG further back, also the side and the bottom rail teeth seem out of spec, set too closely together.
Texas Weapons rear sight on railed dust cover from the same company provides very long sight radius, though without range adjustments of the original RPK rear sight. With 308Win zeroed at 30y, the far zero is at 280y. The trajectory height tops out at just a bit over 5″ above bore line at 160y and drops that far below by 330y. To me, that’s acceptable point blank range for a backup sight within which it’s quicker and more accurate than the V-notch leaf sight with much shorter radius. The iron sights do not co-witness with the red dot but can be used without dismounting the optic. X5L provides backup close range sighting.
Vepr rifles run fine with brass or steel ammunition. With the hydraulic buffer tube, felt recoil is above 22WMR but below 5.45×39. The buttplate is wide and the stock has useful internal storage. I need to replace the standard safety with Krebs version and put some neoprene or rubber around the stock collar just in case my face slides up against it.
Can’t wait to get more range time with this gun. It’s lighter than an AR10 and kicks less. The rifle looks homely but feels great in hand.
A slightly smaller pistol than the compact previously shown, and with an updated C5L light/laser. This pistol is one of the most common, no-frills defensive weapons out there, a Honda Civic of pistols.
AWB2013 — what have you done about it?
Have you at least called your representatives? Won’t do enough by itself but can’t be left out as an important component of the overall fight.
This is a 10-22 receiver. By US law, this is considered a firearm. If you bring this item to a “gun-free” zone, you would be guilty of a felony. In case of Browning M1919 machine gun, the “firearm” is merely a flat rectangular sideplate with a serial number, no different from any other sheet of steel except for the serial number.
By US law, this muffler for rimfire cartridges is also considered a firearm. So bringing this tube with baffles to a school would also be a felony.
If two people own the same model muffler and accidentally swap them at the range, nominally they are both guilty of crimes for turning a restricted item over to somebody else — even though neither person gained any new capability from the act nor harmed anyone.
A friend emailed me this picture. DIAS stands for drop-in auto sear, it’s a part of a trigger mechanism. Possession of this tiny piece of metal which has to be made before 1986 without registration and payment of $200 excise tax is a felony, same as an unregistered machine gun. And yet it’s just a part so simple that putting it with bolts and fixtures on a hardware store shelf wouldn’t attract any attention.
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The examples I bring up are obscure trivia, but they can and sometimes do lead to real prison terms and felony criminal records, and to lifetime loss of voting rights. Gun control treats guns as black magic fetishes. It’s not clear how having a flash hider on a rifle harms the public more than having a muzzle brake, or how having a 15.9″ barrel harms people more than having a 16.1″ barrel, or…the examples are countless. The entire concept of prosecuting innocent possession instead of harmful actions is actively malicious because it ruins real lives over imaginary offenses.
If I watch a French or a Czech film, it usually has subtitles for whatever languages are spoke on screen. If a character speaks German or Spanish, the words are subtitled.
Most American movies just put a caption [speaks German] or [Speaking Italian], the apparent assumption being that putting the actual words spoken wouldn’t be useful to the audience. Since I can follow better in writing from from hearing words spoken quickly, I find that unhelpful and the assumption itself sad.
Could be a combination of those factors. Just looking around, I see many formerly anti-gun people buying weapons, getting training and carry permits. I don’t think this is going to get very far.
To the readers of this blog, I wish a new year filled with old friends and new joys. And I hope that 2013 would be an uneventful year, unmentioned in the history books.
Boberg XR9-L is now shipping. The barrel is 0.9″ longer than the S variant. Not a huge difference, but it gives the barrel full length of 4.2″ (halfway between Glock 17 and Glock 19), a Picatinny rail sufficient for a C5L light/laser and slower slide velocity that allows the L to feed even uncrimped ammunition like CCI Blazer. The same low recoil and great mechanical accuracy as the shortie, but with extra 0.9″ of sight radius.
What would you think if a prospective date confirmed the time, the place and the plans for the evening, then added: “Make sure that you come unarmed”? Would you go to the date anyway or wonder what he’s up to? I wonder much the same when politicians and gun control pushers declare over and over their ardent wish to see me and my compatriots disarmed. Gun control has one very unique feature that sets it apart from other forms of victimization. Any incremental success makes further oppression easier.
Gun control pushers already advocate using deadly force against tens of millions of people whose only crime is peacefully possessing something the rulers do not like. With the actions of a few criminals and psychopaths held up as their excuse, they propose victimizing tens of millions of people who are innocent of any wrongdoing. Like muggers and rapists, gun control pushers rationalize their actions by blaming the victims.
Back in 1938, Nazis fined Jews for the damage inflicted on Jewish businesses by Nazi pogroms. Today, mostly certain politicians want to victimize the American people who have been harmed already by violent criminals in government-enforced “gun-free” zones. Taking away personal arms and restricting future availability would make future mass shootings that much harder to counter. Worse, gun control would make more destructive government excesses harder to counter as well.
Gun control pushers have even less shame than typical rapists. A repulsed rapist doesn’t start whining: “OK, so I can’t rape you now, but how about just dropping your pants? I won’t penetrate you now, but you can’t refuse a reasonable compromise! How about just an inch, no more than two, honest.” Taking away defenses and property of innocent people is a molestation and should be treated as such.
We talk often about the technical aspects of gun control. Arbitrary specifications, capricious enforcement, massive mis-allocation of resouces… What are the financial effects of gun control as proposed by Feinstein and others of her kind?
The most immediate effect is the financial victimization of the entire population of the United States. Tens of millions of people would be stripped of their property and have the use of remaining property sharply restricted. Those who are not gun owners now will see their tax burdens go up greatly — the great amount money for the enforcement of these laws has to come from somewhere. Ask Canadians how many millions their useless registry cost so far.
Gun control pushers claim that gun owners will be compensated. First, one cannot be “compensated” for things she doesn’t want to sell. Second, there’s not enough money in the world to buy all the guns held by Americans because the marginal cost of each next weapon goes up tremendously. For example, relatively common AR15 cost under $1000 before the recent rush started, but severely restricted M16s cost $15,000 and up. Third, paying a person for confiscated guns with taxes taken from that same person is a travesty. Fourth, no monetary compensation can make up for the loss of unique utility.
Going forward, gun control makes arms and related R&D much more costly because of arbitrary constraints added to the real technical considerations. As the direct results of 1986 machine gun ban, US is now falling behind China in automatic weapons for military use. Chinese government uses considerable state funds to prop up their R&D, while the US has always relied on private and commercial development. Back when Browning and Stoner were active, they could work mostly unhampered, but today’s inventors are unable to conduct technical research due to the Byzantine yet viciously enforced regulations. Gun control reduces national security.
Private and public health costs will rise as violent criminals are able to commit more mayhem unopposed by good people. A middle-aged defender with a firearm can stop a typical young thug or two…but has no chance unarmed. The increased impact of criminal violence will affect women and old people most as they have the least amount of brute strength to compensate the lack of technological defenses.
Gun control is a bad — even criminal — idea in many way. And it is expensive, too.
