The Firearm Blog

The Good:
The little Kel-Tecs are very easy to conceal, with very little weight or bulk. They are also very inexpensive.

The Bad and Ugly:
On the 2nd or 3rd round fired, the little bracket that the guide rod slides through fell out and disappeared. I’m told that Kel-Tec now makes slides without this piece, the bracket is a part of the slide, rather than a separate part.

More here.

Guns and Ammo have a review here.

I ran a couple of different types of ammo through the pistol, shooting as fast as I could recover. There is a distinct upward flip to the muzzle. You have to accept this in an auto so light, particularly when most of the weight is in the top half. Still, it was possible to keep six fast shots in a vital zone, and that is all the P-3AT is meant to do. In my hands, the pistol delivered the first shot about eight inches low and left of the remaining five. There were no malfunctions.

The title says it all.

He is renowned as one of the fastest revolver shooters in the world, emptying a five-shot revolver in 0.57 seconds in a group the size of a playing card. Miculek currently holds five world records in exhibition revolver shooting. (See his wikipedia page.)

Following his article about Glock safety Rob has written an article explaining the differences between the safeties in the Glock and XD.

If the Glock firing pin is partially retracted and the Springfield XD is fully retracted we could draw the conclusion that the Glock is half-cocked while the XD is cocked and locked. Both will fire if there is an accident. Both have safeties in place to prevent this from happening. If the only unique safety on the XD’s is the grip safety, how does it work? It looks like the grip safety on the 1911, but it definitely does not quack like the same duck.

More here.

A reader recently asked where he can find an animation showing how a pump action shotgun works. This is not the best animation ever, but it is all I could find. Click here to view it (scroll down the page).

Below is a screenshot (just an image. Click here to view it.):

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Blackwater employees have been supplying the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) with weapons. The PKK are labeled a terrorist group by the US government.

In July Turkey complained to the US that they had seized American made weapons from the PPK.

Two former Blackwater staff have already pleaded guilty to another incident of weapon smuggling.

Blackwater had this to say:

Allegations that Blackwater was in any way associated or complicit in unlawful arms activities are baseless. The company has no knowledge of any employee improperly exporting weapons… There is no indication that the weapons stolen… ever ended up in Iraq.

My Opinion: Thousands of US weapons have ended up on the Turkish blackmarket. It is not unfeasible that some of these were bought by the PPK. It would not surprise me if these accusations are yet another attempt by the Iraqi government to increase pressure on Washington in order to force Blackwater out of Iraq.

Sources:

BBC
CNN
Blackwater
International Herald Tribune

The M16 has been in service for over 40 years and I did some research to see which governments now use it. I decided to create a map showing who uses the M16/M4, AR-15 (civilian version)and the C7/ C8 (Canadian version).

This is what I came up with (click the image to increase the size)

Some of the countries, such as the UK, only use M16/M4/AR-15/C7/C8 rifles for their special forces. Presumably because the AR-15 platform has no end of customizations available.

Here is a complete list of countries (from the Colt website. The above map is more detailed than the Colt map):

Argentina, Australia, The Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Botswana, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Brazil, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, East Timor, Estonia, Fiji, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq ,Ireland, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Jamaica, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Maldives, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, New Zealand, Norway, Laos, Nigeria, Netherlands, Oman,Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vietnam and Venezuela.

UPDATE

Added Georgia, who are adopting the M4, and Afghanistan, who have been given C7 rifles.

An interesting article from B.B.

The kind of glasses I’m talking about today are not for eye protection, though they do that as well. Their primary purpose is to help you see the front sight and target when shooting a target gun. Glasses are used by both rifle and pistol competitors, and even by archers, but since I know pistol glasses much better, they are what I will describe today.

More here.

Glock pistols do not have an external safety that be can engaged and disengaged at will. Instead Glocks have various internal safety

mechanisms to ensure the pistol does not fire a round unless the trigger is pulled, ie. not when dropped, knocked etc.
Rob has written a interesting blog entry explaining how the internal Glock safeties works.

Understanding how your weapons safeties work is also of critical importance. Glock, even though it has no external safeties is no exception.

So that out of the way we can begin discussing how Glock is looking out for you. As you may know the firing pin is under 2/3rds pressure when the slide is charged. As soon as you place a round in the chamber there is pressure, and therby a possibility, however remote, that the round may go off.

More here.

UPDATE: Famous Guns has more information here.

I really do like beautiful photos of rifle racks This one comes from AltheInfidel.

Click to enlarge.

Here is a very good animation showing the AK-47 internals and how it operates. To view the animation thumbnail below to watch it:

Warning, it is quite large (2.3mb)

Unfortunately I do not know who the author of this animation is.