The Firearm Blog

Sean forwarded me an email he received from the Customer Service Manager at Magpul.

The Magpul Masada design has been licensed to Bushmaster Firearms and they are handling production and distribution. It’s been renamed the ACR and was officially scheduled for release in the first Quarter of 2009. However, Bushmaster/Remington plans on offering up the ACR for the M4 replacement solicitation. This is necessitating some possible small design changes (barrel life requirements, rail markings, position of full-auto safety, etc.) to meet certain mil-specs along with much more scrutiny in the testing process. Unfortunately this will most likely delay the release an undetermined amount of time but we are hoping it will be unveiled sometime late this year with a retail of around $1500.

Many dates have been given out in the past for the launch of the Magpul / Bushmaster / Remington ACR so don’t pin your hopes on having a ACR under the Christmas tree! The price seems reasonable.

Many thanks to Sean for the info.

“FREEFALLE7″, a Ranger Instructor, posted the above photo at AR15.com. A student, on arrival at the Swamp phase of Ranger School, showed him his M4 and said “my barrel fell off”. His punishment for not telling an instructor at the Mountain phase (the previous phase) about the broken M4 was to be given a M240, which weights 27 lbs, as a replacement.

Keith J came up with a plausible theory of how this happened

Salt water in the threads. Steel rusts. Steel in contact with aluminum. Aluminum then oxidizes, reducing the rust to iron dust. Joint remains tight until it is abused, then it just falls apart.

This all started when the barrel was installed and it was tightened a bit too much, causing the anodizing to crack

Of course this would have happened over a long period of time and use.

Thanks to Jay for the link.

Federal / ATK have added new loads to the mid priced Fusion range of ammunition. The new loads for 2009 are:

* 62-grain 223 Rem.
* 120-grain 260 Rem.
* 140-grain 6.5×55 Swedish
* 300-grain 45-70 Government
* 260-grain 460 S&W
* 275-grain 500 S&W

Fat White Man has posted photos of his new Gun Room. What a nice setup! I am very jealous.

He even has a gun woodwork area for stock work!

I asked Dave, who blogs at LetsKillDave and is a reader of TFB, to take photos of the internals of his new civilian Steyr AUG A3 rifle and he was kind enough to oblige.

16″ barreled AR-15 vs. 16″ AUG. The bullpup length advantage is obvious.


AR-15 bolt vs. AUG bolt. Very similar design.

I highly recommend reading Dave’s blog post. I learnt a lot about the AUG design that I did not know before.

Thanks Dave.

It has been revealed that the US recently shipped 40 tons of small arms and ammunition worth $10 million to supply the Somali government. Reuters reports:

The U.S. government has provided about 40 tons of weapons and ammunition to Somalia’s embattled government in the past six weeks to help it fight Islamist insurgents, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the United States spent less than $10 million on what he described as small arms and ammunition as well as on payments to other nations to train Somali government forces.

While the State Department confirmed on Thursday that it was providing weaponry to the government, it had not previously provided details on the type, cost or amount.

Since the defeat of the Islamic Courts the impotent government (I use the word lightly as they don’t govern much of the country at all) failed to secure the territory won and another hard-line Islamic group Al-Shabaab rose from the ashes to fill the void. This is the group that recently performed public double amputations (hand and foot) on four thieves in Mogadishu.

The first thing I thought when reading the Reuters article was that Al-Shabaab are sure to try to capture the weaponry. Sure enough, they have just announced that they will. The Associated Press reports:

A spokesman for radical Islamic insurgents says his group will seize weapons the U.S. has supplied to Somalia’s embattled government.

Sheik Hassan Ya’qub of al-Shabab says the weapons shipments will escalate violence in war-wracked country. He was speaking late Sunday in reaction to U.S. officials’ statements last week that the Obama administration was supplying arms and providing military training to the shaky government.

I think training and support from an established foreign conventional force is far more important in a country already swimming in arms that more arms and ammo. It is pretty safe to assume special forces are training government troops, as they are in neighboring Ethiopia. Unfortunately no African countries want to get involved in a war that does directly effect them.

I suspect the US will use the carrot approach to entice Ethiopia to once again enter the country and disrupt the Islamic rebels. Once again Ethiopia will pull out before the government gets a grip on the country. No country want to stick around and suffer from attrition at the hand of insurgents.

In the past I have blogged intermittently on the weekend. From now on I will not blog on Saturday or Sunday unless there is some breaking news. This gives me some time to work on longer posts for the upcoming week, site maintenance and to get outside for shooting and hunting.

If you are a regular you can safely skip visiting TFB on Saturday and Sundays.

The SurvivalBlog have published a blog post detailing the cost savings of hand loaded vs. factory ammunition based on the ammunition and component prices as of this month.

Aside from price, reloading also allows you produce better quality ammunition and tune the load for accuracy in your particular gun.

Thanks to Solomon for sending me the link

Savage have published a web page detailing how the Savage Accustock works.

It uses a bolted in wedge to push the recoil lug tightly against the aluminum bedding block. Interesting.

Caleb got thinking about bolt action rifles and noted that no bolt guns exist to his knowledge that can feed from STANAG (AR-15 / M16) magazines.

everyone seems to be talking about how the world/economy/social order is going to collapse soon (it’s not) I figured the best rifle for that collapse would be a bolt action .223 with an 18 inch barrel, forward mounted optic, back up iron sights, and the ability to feed from standard AR15 magazines.

This got me thinking and I could not come up with one that did.

My artist impression of what such a Remington 700 would look like.

The Australian AIA M-10 “5th Generation” Lee-Enfield rifle comes in 7.62×39mm and feeds from a AK-47 magazine. The one pictured below is being sold on gun broker. Not many are available in the USA because after it was found out that some parts of the rifle (maybe the whole) was manufactured in Vietnam, they were banned.

While 30 round magazines are not as practical on a bolt action as they are on a semi-automatic, magazine parity with the AR-15 would be a big bonus. Remington and Ruger are you listening?

Ruger have partnered with the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS) to produced a special edition Ruger Vaquero single action revolver. The SASS Vaquero is sold as a matched set (two guns) bearing consecutive serial numbers.

Ruger SASS Vaquero

The new revolver features a high-gloss stainless steel finish, the lower and wider hammer from the Ruger Montado and SASS markings. It is chambered in .357 Magnum and has a 4.62″ barrel. MSRP is $1459 (that is for a pair of revolvers) and will be available in August.

More info available at Ruger.

Vote for David has written a detailed tutorial on producing great looking photos of a gun bores like the photo below. I highly recommend reading it.

Beautiful!

I am often asked by readers how they can get a job in the firearms industry but since I have never worked in the industry I cannot offer any advice. Frederic emailed me a link to a recruitment company called Shooting Search that specializes in the “shooting, hunting, knife, law enforcement/tactical and outdoor industry.” They are definitely worth checking out if job in the gun industry appeals to you.

Thanks to Frederic for the link.

CNBC (via. SaysUncle) reports that it may be, although this analysis does not appeal to be based on hard sales data.

Shares of the nation’s major firearms makers fell Monday on analyst concerns that the postelection surge in hand gun sales may be coming to an end.

Both Sturm Ruger & Co. Inc. and Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. declined following an article in the business publication Barron’s, which suggested that the companies could see slowing consumer demand for their firearms.

The news dragged stocks lower, but it wasn’t completely unexpected, said Cai von Rumohr, an analyst with Cowen and Co.