Why Not Renew the AWB, a Leftist Speaks

Over on the Kontradictions blog, a self-described leftist wrote a very cogent piece on why we should not reinstate the Clinton-era Assault Weapons Ban.

It’s not easy being a leftist who loves guns. It’s like being a Republican who listens to NPR or supports single payer health care. But being a leftist, I get exposed to all the liberal publications and media that invariably call for gun control every time someone does something stupid with one. Being a gun enthusiast, I also get exposed to the political Right’s oversimplification of those liberals as somehow lacking moral fiber or true appreciation of freedom. Rather than agreeing with both, I tend to end up arguing with both. It’s exhausting to always feel like I’m apologizing for the other “side”.

This article takes a point of view, but aims to do so in a way that members of both sides of the political spectrum can understand. I’ll try to give some idea as to why we on the political left roll our eyes at the rhetoric of the NRA, and how we in the “gun culture” can possibly defend something called “assault weapons”.

We all know the cycle by now: Tragic incident occurs, both sides attempt to use it for their political gain, both sides act shocked that the other would attempt to use it for political gain, insults are flung, statistics are cherry-picked, rinse, repeat.

I began writing this some time after the Aurora massacre, but it was just this morning that news started coming in of the mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. I knew the wave of cries for a renewal of the “assault weapon” and “high capacity” magazine bans hadn’t yet faded from Aurora, and that they would be reinforced by this next event, regardless of how relevant either of the topics were to the incident.

So in order to get around to why the assault weapons ban was an utter and absolute failure in its attempt to deter violent crime, I have to start with mass shootings.

Kontra’s post is outstanding and I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

Jew Without a Gun

No not me.
Hollywood screenwriter Robert J. Avrech has reposted his three-part essay, “Jew Without a Gun,” over on his blog.

Part One
Hollywood is Burning
Hollywood is on fire.
Karen and I lock every door in the house, shut tight the windows. We move through the house switching off all the lights.
Gazing from our bedroom window we watch orange flames lick at the darkness, pillars of black smoke climb into the sky. We can actually smell the acrid odor of burning rubber.
“Look how close they are,” says Karen.
“Just past La Cienega. Maybe eight blocks away.”
Karen gives me a long penetrating gaze:
“What do we do if they come here?”
My mind is racing away. The truth is we are defenseless. Unless I get crazy inventive like Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs.
“After this is all over,” I vow, “I’m going to buy a pistol.”
Karen says: “How about a shotgun?”
Dissolve to—
Two Hours Earlier:
The rioters are surging toward the front doors of the theater. They are shouting, but the glass doors are so thick we cannot hear what they’re screaming. The visual is quite enough. Their faces are twisted into expressions of raw hatred. The mob looks intent on some serious violence.

I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

Which One of these Rifles is an Assault Weapon?

Identify which of these rifles is an assault weapon, according to anti-gunners:

Has to be the second one, right, because it has a pistol grip stock and a “banana clip?”

In fact, both pictures are of the very the same rifle, taken about 10 minutes apart. It’s a Ruger 10/22 Carbine that I bought about 10 years ago. For the second picture I added a Butler Creek folding stock that I got from Amazon (eligible for Amazon Prime, yay!), and a 25 round magazine in place of the 10 round mag the 10/22 normally comes with. It shoots the common-as-dirt .22 Long Rifle cartridge.

Ruger has been making the 10/22 since 1964. Over five million have been made since then, making it one of the most popular sporting rifles in history. It’s well suited to informal target shooting and small game hunting. The majority of them were sold to American shooters, and since they basically don’t wear out, the vast majority of those remain in circulation. (Or “on the streets,” if you are a gun banner.)

The bullets fired by the rifle as configured in the second picture are no more deadly than those in pic #1. The only functional differences between the rifle as shown in both pics is that with the folder it can be stored in a smaller space, and you can fire 2.5 times as many cartridges without reloading. Reloading takes only a couple of seconds even with the 10 round mags, so while gun banners like to make hay over “high capacity” magazines, against defenseless targets like schoolkids confined in a “gun free” zone, the difference is virtually nonexistent.

Likewise, millions of 25+ round magazines have been sold by Butler Creek, Eagle, MWG and other third party manufacturers since at least the 1980s. Ruger got on the 25 round mag bandwagon a few years ago, and that’s what is shown in pic #2.

The only tool I needed to change the sporting carbine in the first pic to the deadly assault rifle in the second picture was a screwdriver.

The point of this post is that “assault weapons” as defined by gun banners are not functionally different from “sporting” rifles as manufactured and sold in the millions for about a century. Artificial definitions of banned or permissible arms created by people with little to no firearms knowledge don’t make us safer.  Tackling the root causes of crime, whether they be mental illness or outright evil is harder but is key in actually making us safer. So is allowing potential victims the right to fight back.

Poking the Hornet’s Nest

I just got back from my regular gun shop, Surplus City in Feasterville, PA. I wasn't really planning to buy anything, I went mainly out of curiosity.

The salesmen looked shell shocked from how busy they've been. Business went into high gear after the election. I was last there on Black Friday and they were mobbed. It normally takes about five minutes for an instant background check to go through for me, but that day it took about 15 because PICS (PA Instant Check System; PA doesn't use NICS) was so busy. Black rifles such as AR-15s and AKs had just started to come back into the supply channel right before Sandy Hook happened, then things got really crazy.

Surplus City is usually well stocked with AR-15s and AKs. Today I saw no AR-15s and a solitary AK. There were a few Century VZ-2008s (VZ-58 clones) and about 8 to 10 stainless Ruger Mini-14 GBs.

But it’s not just “assault weapons” that are flying off the shelved. The weekend after the Sandy Hook shooting, the distributor that Surplus City gets guns from sold 1100 Ruger LCPs (pocket sized .380s). If you go to Cabela’s website, the Pietta 1858 Remingtons with blued finish are out of stock. I wonder how many of those were bought because there’s no paperwork required.

Further, more people are getting their carry permits. This morning I  renewed my PA License to Carry a Firearm at the Montgomery County Courthouse. The deputies in the Sherriff's office told me that they processed 53 LTCFs yesterday, the vast majority of which were new applicants, not renewals. If PICS  had been working faster, they would've done about 70. I didn’t think to ask what a normal number would be, but the impression I got was that 53 is way higher than normal. Per one of the guys at Surplus City, Bucks County is just as busy.

The gun banners really poked a hornet's nest with all their hue and cry for an AWB. Hopefully, these new gun owners are joining the NRA and contacting their politicritters.

Letter to my Senators and Congressman

I sent this off to my elected representatives. Feel free to plagiarize as you see fit.



The usual antigun media figures and politicians have used the wake of last week's tragic school shooting in Newton, CT to promote their anti-rights agenda. We do not need any more gun control in the US. No gun control measure has been been proven to reduce crime or make society safer.

Three things which will reduce the frequency and impact of mass shooting are:

1. Improve our mental health care system. If the perpetrators in any of the recent mass shooting over the past couple of decades could have received good treatment for their psychoses, odds are most if not all of them would never have gone on to kill anybody.

2. Stop creating victim disarmament zones. "Gun free zones" are a feel-good non-solution to violence. The only people who obey the prohibitions on guns in such places are the same people who won't commit murder any way. All these zones do is create safe hunting preserves for psycopaths.

3. More specifically than #2, we should encourage school faculty and staff to get training and carry firearms so that they can protect the children in their care. When Israel was faced with school shooting attacks by Arab terrorists, they didn't put up signs saying that no guns were allowed on the premises. They did the smart thing -- they trained school staff are armed them. School shootings dropped off to almost nothing.

Please don't cave in to the hysterical cries for more gun control from the mass media and the usual anti-gun politicians. We can take action to make our schools and society safer, but not by giving in to their demands.

Why Americans Need Military-Pattern Arms

The very guns which the media and anti-gunners want to ban are those most protected by the Second Amendment. From Federalist No.46:

Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. 

That was written by James Madison, the primary author of the United States Constitution.

Gun Control is Anti-Jewish

I didn’t want to write this in the wake of the atrocity that happened last week in Connecticut, but since the anti-gunners gleefully waded into the gore of the innocents, I’m going to exercise my First Amendment rights in defense of my Second Amendment rights, with a focus on a Jewish perspective.

Back in 2004, I wrote the following:

The Maccabees -- the Jewish rebels who tossed the Greeks out on their posteriors -- didn't win with pleas for tolerance or even harsh language. It was an armed rebellion. Too many Jewish Americans gloss over this fact during all the holiday shopping, menorah lighting, and wolfing down potato pancakes.

The point that American Jews need to take to heart from Chanukah is that sometimes the government is not here to help and the only way left to preserve our freedom is through force. That means the willingness and means to use force. In 2004, the means of force are firearms and that's why it pisses me off to no end that so many Jewish Americans support gun control, especially in light of the most blatant act of antisemitism in history -- the Shoah (Holocaust) -- being a mere 59 years ago.

When only the military and police have guns, we call that a police state. If you grant a government that much power, there is a really good chance that they will commit democide. As we know, anytime you have a runaway government, one of the favorite targets is its Jewish population. Six million Jews were murdered within living memory, by a country which was considered one of the most sophisticated in Europe.

Anti-semitism is not a relic of the past. Entering “resurgence of anti-semitism” into Google yields 901,000 results. Recently, the leader of a political party in Hungary called for Jews to be registered.

Resurgent anti-semitism isn’t an entirely European phenomenon either.

“Oh, but that can’t happen here!” you say. Really? Why? Again, within living memory, Americans of a unfavored ethnic group were singled out and forced into concentration camps. The Japanese-American Internment of World War 2 pales in comparison the atrocities committed by the Nazis, but I shudder to think of what would’ve happened to those Japanese-Americans had we not been able to turn the tide of the war within a year.

“Turn the other cheek” is a Christian concept, not a Jewish one. In fact,in the Talmud, we are instructed that, “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” (VILNA TALMUD, Tractate Sanhedrin, folio 73a). Sometimes, that someone who is coming to kill you wears a uniform.

If you advocate civilian disarmament, you are advocating making Jews defenseless. If you are serious that never again will Jews be slaughtered en masse, then you need to make sure that we have the tools to prevent it. Freedom isn’t safe. There are risks to freedom. But giving up our freedom in search of safety is a fool’s errand, as history shows.

All Comments Now Moderated

Due to increasing amounts of spam I am now moderating all comments.

CQ CQ CQ de KB3MNK /AG

After getting my No-Code Technician's amateur radio license back in 2005 I was active on 2M for a couple years, but haven't done much with it lately. The FCC finally eliminated all Morse Code requirements in 2007 but I never got around to upgrading.  Recently, I came to the conclusion after the bout of storms we've had ove the past year and a half or so that I should get back into it, and upgrade my license.

So, last Thursday I took the FCC's Element 3 exam and upgraded my license to General Class. The update hasn't shown up yet in the FCC's Universal Licensing System database, but I have my CSCE.

To prepare for the exam I used three resources:

• The ARRL's General Class License Manual
• Free online practice questions from QRZ.com
• Free online practice questions from Hamexam.org

Although QRZ.com and Hamexam.org contain the same pool of questions, they present the questions differently. When you take a practice test at QRZ they are shown to you one question per page, and immediately graded. However, when you take a practice test at Hamexam all 35 questions are presented on one page, and not graded until you click a button after finishing all of them. I found Hamexam's format to render better on my iPad, but I found QRZ's format better for learning.

With my newly acquired HF privileges I need to get a new radio. The modes I'm interested in operating on HF are SSB, PSK-31, and Olivia MFSK, on 10M to 40M. 60M and 80M would be cool, too, but I don't know yet if I'll be able to setup an antenna suitable for them.

After seeking input on Arfcom and doing a lot of online research, I am leaning heavily to the Icom IC-718. It's been out for awhile and gets good reviews on eHam.net. Plus, compared with radios like the Yaesu FT-857 of -897, or similar Icom and Kenwood HF/VHF/UHF capable units, it's less menu driven, which should make it easier to use. The IC-718 does 80M to 10M, lacking 6M, VHF, and UHF. For the latter two I have a Yaesu FT-7800R and VX-5RS. While 6M might be nice to have I don't think I'll really miss it that much.

Along with the new radio I'll need a new antenna and an antenna tuner. Due to space constraints I'm leaning towards an Ultimax 100 strung between the roof of my house and a short mast near my back fence. (At least I don't need to deal with a homeowner's association.)

For mobile use I'll also pick up some sort of portable vertical antenna and/or a multiband dipole that I can string up between a couple of trees.

This should be fun.

New Hickory Flat Bow

Back on August 20th I placed an order with GIBow.com for two of his unfinished "Classic Hunter" 64" hickory longbows. Before ordering I'd read mixed online reviews of GIBow.com, which gave me a little pause. However, at $114.95 shipped for two bows I decided to chance it. Delivery was expected in 8 to 10 weeks. I finally got them the other day, on 11/19.

Incidentally, I checked GIBow.com the other day and the website now says that he only sells items that are already in stock, only accepting custom orders from vendors or bulk purchases. Earlier this month the site was down for maintenance, so I'm guessing that he was so backordered he didn't want to take on any more business.

The bows came packed bound together with cardboard over the tips, all covered with a heavy duty plastic sheath-type packaging, with no padding. They came undamaged, thankfully.

The first bow has a left handed grip with a draw weight of 50#, while the second one has a primitive, ambidextrous grip, and a draw weight of 45#. Each bow came fitted with a well-waxed brown Flemish twist string. The string came unserved and without a nocking point set.

The bows are of the American flatbow style. I.e., the limbs have a rectangular cross section, not the D-shape of an English longbow.

One of my friends is planning to buy the 45# ambidextrous bow, while I'm keeping the LH 50# bow.

I inspected the bows carefully before stringing them. The tiller is even on both bows and the grain looks OK.

Along with the bows I ordered a set of faux copperhead snake skins to use as a backer. They look OK although I'm sure that real snake skins would look better. They would be more expensive, of course. I'm not impressed with the "snake skins" and left them off for now.

The unfinished bow:

To finish the 50 pounder, last night I lightly sanded it to 400 grit, then wiped it down with a clean paper towel wet with mineral spirits. After the bow dried I sanded it again with 400 grit paper and once more wiped it down with mineral spirits. I then gave it two coats of Watco Danish Oil with a medium walnut tint. I let the oil dry overnight.

This morning I cut a piece of leather and glued it to the arrow shelf. I also cut a piece of "Super Pad" silencing material and applied it as a strike plate. Then, before stringing it, I added otter fur silencers to the string. Once strung I served the string with some artificial sinew to both protect the center of the string, and also to fatten it so my arrow nocks snap onto it. I also made a nocking point with a shorter length of the artificial sinew.

I set the fistmele at about 6.5" by twisting the Flemish string to shorten it.

A closeup of the riser:

After letting the cement holding the arrow rest on dry for awhile, I did some shooting. It feels like it might be a little heavier than 50# but I expect it to settle it a bit. It shoots fast with little to no hand shock, depending on how tightly I grip the riser. It is dead silent.

After I was done shooting I brought the bow inside and gave it a coat of Sno Seal, which is a beeswax based compound intended for waterproofing leather. I've used it on other wood items before and it works nicely in this application. Other options for finishing the wood would be another coat of Danish Oil, tung oil, or a spray on polyurethane clear coat.

While I was a bit disappointed in the longer than expected delivery time, I am very pleased with the bow itself. It feels great in the hand and shoots well.

How to properly use the Mosin Nagant stripper clip

If you've ever tried to load a Mosin-Nagant rifle using stripper clips, you you know that it can be frustrating. Here's how to do it correctly:



Note that because of the cartridge interruptor in the Mosin-Nagant's magazine, rim position should be irrelevant. In my experience with several M-N rifles reality diverged from theory. I tested the method with my Ishevsk M1938 carbine and VKT m/1939 rifle, and it works with both.

Bread, Circuses, and Vaginas

Well, it’s now official. The Free Shit Army is in control of this country, and as time goes on its numbers will only grow. It’s only a matter of time before this country is Greece on meth.

Last night’s results pretty much confirmed Romney’s statement that about half the country is more interested in receiving government than in any kind of fiscal responsibility.

We have a government that’s made it too easy to not work, and instead live off the public dole. It used to be that if you couldn’t find work in one part of the country you’d move to where the work is. Moreover, there is no longer any shame in being on the dole. Hell, plenty of people revel in it. Instead, the long term unemployed sit on their bums collecting unemployment, then disability, then welfare, and work that Americans used to do is performed by illegal immigrants grateful to have any chance at a better life.

The election also confirmed that if the Republicans ever want to win a national election, opposition to abortion needs to be dropped from the party’s platform. Dems and the mainstream media masterfully injected the issue into an election that should have been about the economic and foreign policy failures of the Obama administration. But GOP candidates can’t help but offer up juicy sound bites like “legitimate rape” to the MSM when asked about abortion. Most people aren’t political wonks and don’t analyze issues in depth.

If you can shout loud enough at women that Republican men are gonna be all up in their vaginas, the GOP will lose. Like it or not, that drove enough women into voting for big government Democrats to help clinch Obama’s second term.

Likewise, dump the institutional opposition to gay marriage. Why in the hell is this being pushed as a Federal issue to begin with? While gays may be a minority, they are very vocal, over-represented in the media, and have a lot of straight people who agree with them on this issue.

It didn’t help things that the GOP further fucked itself by pandering to Latinos by not enforcing immigration laws. Yeah, Latinos are social conservatives who will vote on those lines. How did that work out?

Compounding all this is a media that with one hand feeds us meaningless pap to distract us from the real issues, and then with the other hand fails to cover the real issues. People are so concerned with bullshit like American Idol that even if they are informed of scandals like Fast and Furious or the Benghazi cover up, they soon lose interest. Forget about justice for our murdered Border Patrol agents, several hundred murdered Mexicans, and the Americans killed in Libya while Obama and his cabinet denied them help in real time.

Welcome to the United Socialist States of America.

Backup Power

Over on Survival & Emergency Preparedness, I've put up a post about my plans for backup power for my home.

Read it here.

Short Range Day

Today I was able to make a quick trip to the range with my Ruger 22/45 Lite and my Springfield XD-9.

I started out with the Ruger. Unfortunately, I accidentally left the Bushnell TRS-25 on the last time I had the gun out of its case, so the battery was dead. I didn't have a spare with me. Annoying, to say the least, especially since my primary reason for going to the range today was to zero the Bushnell.

Anyway, I was able to do some function testing with Remington Golden Bullet .22s by aiming through the dot sight, using only the pistol's front sight. Doing so I was shooting very high, so I aimed at the bottom of my target at 15 yards. I was able to put about 60 rounds of the Remingtons through the gun without any malfunctions. The Golden Bullets weren't very accurate in the other .22s I've fired them in, so once I get back to the range with a functional dot sight, it'll be interesting to see how well they group in the Ruger.

Of note, the GBs have a larger hollow point than most other bulk pack .22 LR loads, so they might be useful for varmint control at close range. (In my other .22s. Semiauto pistols are illegal for hunting in PA.)

My experience today with the Springfield XD-9 was more positive. I brought along 150 rounds -- 100 Brown Bear 115 grain FMJ and 50 PMC 115 grain FMJ. I shot 130 of them at 25 yards, and kept almost all my shots inside the -1 zone on my IDPA target. About half of them were in the -0 zone.

As expected, the Springfield ran like a top. In fact, since I've owned it I probably have close to 1,000 rounds through it and as far as I can remember, I have not experienced any malfunctions. Most of the rounds through it have been ball, but about 100 were Speer 124 grain Gold Dot JHPs. I used it in the 2009 zombie shoot at Langhorne Rod and Gun Club, where it got soaked because it rained all day. No problems there, either.

After I got home and cleaned the pistols, I installed a Tandem Kross stainless steel hammer bushing in the Ruger. In doing so, I removed the magazine disconnector, which prevents the hammer from dropping if you pull the trigger with no magazine in the gun. This make field stripping and reassembly more of a PITA, because you have to drop the hammer at various stages of these processes. It also allows the magazine to drop free when you press the mag catch.

While I had the hammer out of the gun I also lightly stoned the sear engagement notch on the hammer to smooth the trigger pull.

Overall, it was a productive day, even if I didn't accomplish everything I set out to do.

We Lucked Out

We lucked out in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Our power went out last night but was restored after about two hours. This morning I went outside to check the house and yard for damage. Except for a torn snowblower cover, we came through unscathed.

One of my neighbors has some tree branches down.

We’re still getting 20 – 30 MPH gusts, it’s raining, and temperatures are in the mid-40s. About 1.3M people in PA are still without power, 2.3M in NJ, and who knows how many in MD, DE, NY, and New England.

Of course, many others weren’t so lucky. NJ and NY got slammed especially hard. The Jersey Shore got trashed and Manhattan looks post-apocalyptic, from some of the photos I’ve seen.

Hurricane Sandy Updates

FYI, I will be posting Hurricane Sandy updates via Twitter.

https://twitter.com/davemarkowitz

Waiting for Sandy

Last night over on Survival Preps I put up a post about my last minute preparations for Hurricane Sandy. There's not much more to be done but wait.

Stay safe, people.

Improving the Ruger 22/45 Lite

Last night I started the process of modding the Ruger 22/45 Lite to better meet my needs, by mounting a Bushnell TRS-25 red dot sight using the rail which came with the pistol.

The TRS-25 was on my Century NDS-2 AK-74, but I hadn't yet zeroed it, so moving it to the Ruger didn't lose me anything on the AK. I had a spare Bushnell Trophy red dot sight that will go on the AK, using a BP-02 low mount.

Anyway, I think it looks pretty spiffy:

I'm hoping to get it zeroed this weekend.

This afternoon I ordered two Tandemkross replacement hammer bushings, which will allow me to get rid of the magazine disconnect. The second bushing is for the 22/45 Mark III that I bought several years ago. This will make field stripping and reassembly easier because it will allow me to drop the hammer with no magazine in the gun. I disklike magazine disconnects; IMHO they provide a false sense of safety.

Next up may be a Volquartsen hammer, sear, and/or trigger. But I first want to put a couple hundred more rounds through it to see if the trigger slicks up enough for my taste.

And of course, the final accessory will be a sound suppressor. I'm still researching which suppressor I want to buy, and have to get an NFA trust in place first.

Ruger .22 Autoloader Reassembly

Today I field stripped the Ruger 22/45 Lite that I bought yesterday and fired last night. It’s always a good idea to strip a gun, clean and lubricate before your first range trip with it. This helps you get familiar with the gun and if there are any metal shavings left over from the factory you can clean them out.

That said, all I did yesterday before shooting the Ruger was to run a couple patches through the bore and put some automatic transmission fluid on the bolt.

Today I disassembled it per the instruction manual. After giving it a good cleaning and lube I went to put it back together. I noticed that with some ATF on the internals, the trigger pull is better.

The reassembly process is why I didn’t do it yesterday – in my experience reassembling Ruger .22 semiauto pistols is a major pain in the ass. You have to do things in the exact correct order and it also helps to keep the piece oriented correctly, as described in the manual.

One thing that helps is that nowadays, you can go to YouTube and find disassembly/reassembly videos for many guns, especially if they are popular. The Rugers are no exception. This one and this one are pretty good.

Thankfully, aside from the gyrations you need to go through to put a Ruger .22 autoloader back together, they are really well designed pistols. They are very reliable and it is not necessary to field strip them after every range trip. What I do is clean the bore, especially the chamber, clean the breech face, bolt face, and under the extractor.

I also make sure it’s well lubricated, probably more so than recommended in Ruger’s manual. .22 rimfire ammo is dirty and keeping the gun well lubed will help flush out unburned powder and fouling.

Note that if you live in a dusty environment like the southwestern US, keeping the gun slathered in oil may not be an option. I’d be interested in hearing from readers who have experience keeping Ruger .22 autopistols running in such locales. Please leave a comment.

Saturday Night Range Report

This afternoon I went over to Surplus City in Feasterville, PA and sold my PSL and Norinco Type 84 AK. Both are nice rifles but have been gathering dust and taking up space. With some of the money from the rifles I picked up a Ruger 22/45 Lite.

The Lite version of the 22/45 has a thin 4.4” steel barrel surrounded by an aluminum shroud. Combined with the Zytel grip frame, it weighs only 22.8 oz. But what’s perhaps most interesting is that the end of the barrel is threaded 1/2”x28, for the express purpose of mounting a sound suppressor (AKA silencer). From the factory, the threads are protected with a knurled aluminum nut with the same diameter as the barrel shroud.

The Ruger came with two 10-round magazines and a optics rail which allows you to mount a scope or a red dot on the gun. It also comes with a padlock so you can lock the bolt open to prevent unauthorized, and a pistol rug. Overall, it’s a nice package.

After getting the Ruger home I ran a couple patches through the bore, and lubricated it with a generous amount of Castrol automatic transmission fluid. (ATF makes a great gun oil and is a decent cleaner in a pinch.)

Along with my dad I took the Ruger to the range tonight. We put 150 rounds through it. The first 100 were CCI Mini-Mag 40 grain solids. In our experience if a .22 autoloader won’t run on Mini-Mags, it has problems. As expected, it ran perfectly with them.

We also put 50 rounds of CCI subsonic hollowpoints through the Ruger. We experienced two failures of the gun to fully go into battery with the subsonic loads. I’m hoping that if I run a couple hundred more high speed rounds through it, it’ll be sufficiently broken in to offer similar reliability with the slower, quieter ammo.

I noticed after about 50 rounds the the front sight blade on the Ruger, which is held on with one screw, came loose. I noticed before it fell off and tightened it back up with the small screwdriver on my Swiss Army Knife, but tomorrow when I clean the gun I’ll put a drop of Loctite on the screw to keep it in place.

The one thing needs attention is the trigger pull. It’s heavy, with some slack and take up. I’m going to look into something like a Volquartsen trigger to reduce the weight and make the pull more crisp. Aside from the trigger, I’m pleased with the Ruger 22/45 Lite.

Of course, the other accessory I am seriously considering is getting a suppressor for it. My first step with be to form an NFA gun trust, then decide which can I want to buy. For more information on such trusts, check out David Goldman’s blog.

Dad mostly shot his Ruger 1911. He’s had it since shortly after they came out but this was my first chance to shoot it. I have to say that if I was looking to buy a 1911 the Ruger would be right near the top of the list. It is very reliable, has a good sights, a great trigger and if you aren’t shooting one-hole groups at 7 yards with it, it’s your fault. The only modification I’d make to it if it was mine would be to add an ambidextrous safety, because I am left handed.

We also put a 50 round box of PMC 9mm 115 grain FMJ through my Radom VIS-35. Dad bought it when a batch came in from Russia several years ago, and last year he gave it to me. What a neat pistol. If spare parts weren’t uncommon and expensive, and original mags over $100 a pop, I’d shoot it a lot more. (Several years ago Dad bought an aftermarket mag at a gun show but it didn’t work. Luckily, when he took it back the next day he was able to get his money back.)

My VIS was made after the Germans conquered Poland but before they started cutting quality in the latter days of WW2. It was probably made around 1943 or so. It has a good trigger pull but the sights are atrocious – typical for the period. Still, it’s really nice to shoot and if I had to go back in time and go behind German lines, it would be my second choice in a sidearm, second only to a Browning High power.

All in all, a fun night.