The Firearm Blog

JMB’s Utah 6,912 square foot home is currently on the market for $374,900.

The NY Times reports:

COMMON SPACES: Most of the house is original, including a banister stretching from the entry to the attic, beveled windows, hardwood floors and fireplaces. There are built-in cupboards in the dining room and storage drawers on each of the house’s three floors.

PERSONAL SPACES: There are two bedrooms in the finished basement, one on the main level and four on the second level. An eighth bedroom is in the attic suite, which includes a living room that, according to the listing agent, served as a workshop for John Browning (and includes remnants of a wiring system used to buzz his maids). Most bedrooms have views of the yard and neighboring historic houses; the attic has treetop and mountain views.

How cool would it be to say you live in the house where JMB designed guns!

Hat Tip: Guy Sagi @ Guns and Hunting

I won’t be blogging tomorrow, so you can skip TFB on Thursday without missing anything.

San Diego Reader has published a very well written article about open carry in California, which is legal as long as the gun is unloaded. The author, Rosa Jurjevics, who had never fired a gun let alone carried openly, met up with a few open carry enthusiast at a boardwalk at Pacific Beach. After giving her a lesson on the legalities of OC and how to deal with the police, they handed her a Ruger Single Six.

Kudos to the Rosa for writing an article that did not portray those who open carry as extremists or agitators, but simply as a group of people who choose to exercise their legal right to carry openly, and who hope that their constitutional right to carry will be recognized in the future.

Hat Tip: Say Uncle

The specifications of the Remington ACR (Adaptive Combat Rifle) have finally been published. Bushmaster and Magpul are both still very much involved in the development of the rifle although I can see very little that has changed since the original Magpul Masada was unveiled.

Original Magpul Masada. Original handguard is not mentioned on Remington’s website.

Remington ACR.

The ACR is made up of an aluminum upper receiver and lower polymer receiver.

The lower receiver resembles the AR-15 and SCAR lower receivers. Like the polymer AR-15 lower receivers made by Calvary Arms, the ACR’s pistol grip is part of the mould and cannot be removed. The trigger group has a two stage trigger that has a pull weight of 6.25 lbs. The trigger group parts are compatible with the AR-15 / M16. Modes of operation are semi-automatic or fully automatic. All the controls are all ambidextrous.

The operating system was inspired by the AR-18. It uses a short stroke piston system – meaning the piston slams into the bolt carrier knocking is back and cycling the action. The AR-18 bolt carrier design has been improved, at least in my opinion, although it would be more costly to manufacture than the AR-18. The AR-18 has twin guide rods and twin recoil springs, see the photo below. The ACR has a recoil spring that inserts into the bolt carrier and is guided by steel rails that are attached to the receiver.

The bolt is in the AR-15 style with 8 lugs, one of which is an extractor. The bolt can be easily swapped out and a 6.8 mm SPC or 6.5mm Grendel bolt swapped in.

AR-180 (semi-auto version of the AR-18). Photo from carteach0’s blog.

ACR bolt carrier.

Steel guide rails indicated by arrow.

The rate of fire is 650-700 RPM. This is slightly higher than the SCAR which features a larger/heavier bolt carrier.

The side mounted charging handle does not reciprocate, unlike the SCAR, but can engage the bolt carrier and used as a forward assist.

Barrels offered will 10.5”, 14.5”, 16.5” and 18” in length and can be changed by the operator without tools. Magpul originally touted compatibility with standard M16 barrels, although Remington does not mention this on their website.

Two stocks will be offered: a foldable / adjustable stock and a fixed stock.

The 14.5″ carbine version of the ACR weights 7 lbs (unloaded)

Drake from Magpul posted these photos online:

More info at Remington Military
Hat Tip: ITS Tactical

Advanced Armament Corporation (AAC) have developed a new ultra high-end suppressor called the Ti-RANT. It weights about 1 oz less than their Evolution 9mm suppressor while offering greater sound reduction. This is achieved by using titanium and titanium alloys, hence the name Ti-RANT.

The specs are:
Weight: 8.6 OZ (244gm)
Length: 7.9” (201mm)
Diameter: 1.38” (35mm)
Finish: GunKote, T3 HARD COAT& SCARMOR
Sound Reduction: 35-38dB

The business end of the Ti-RANT

Of course the high-end construction and technology comes at a price. AAC will be selling it for $1195 shipped. That is about $300 more than the Evo 9.

More info at AAC

When I posted a link to the American Rifleman double rifle “plinking” video I did not realize there was an accompanying article to go with it.

American Rifleman have reviewed four different double rifles, all with a starting price of about $10,000! The double rifle has a special place in the collective psyche of hunters. I can think of few things in life that I want more than to hold one under the hot African sun in the pursuit of Cape Buffalo.

“the double rifle is a weapon of romance … [it] connotes ivory hunting, long lines of safari porters, drinking sundowners beside a fire of nyombo wood while lions roar on the veldt, affairs of the heart with comely lady leopard hunters.” – Jack o’Connor in Complete Book of Rifles and Shotguns, 1961

Holland and Holland double rifle in .375 H&H Magnum. From Wikipedia.

At the bottom of the article there is a PDF link to view the entire article as it appears in the print magazine.

Hat Tip: The Unforgiving Minute

One of the most useful gun cleaning / smithing tools I have is a dental pick.

The dental pick I use looks like the one pictured 3rd from the right.

Dental picks can be used for any number of common tasks such as scraping powder residue out of hard to reach places, holding down springs and miscellaneous adjustments. If you plink with dirty .22 LR ammunition they can be used to gently scrape off the powder that accumulates on the bolt face, so you can keep on shooting without feeding problems and without having to strip the gun.

They do have limitations. Because they are made from hard stainless steel you have to be gentle with them and you should keep away from outside finish of a gun.

A single stainless steel dental pick costs only a few dollars on eBay.

They get a 5 star rating from me, at only a few dollars they are worth every cent.

The blog has turned two years old! I can hardly believe I made it this long, it feels like I have been doing it for 20 years, not two.

When the blog had it’s first birthday I posted some stats:

* 593 posts
* 1,178 comments
* Most comments in a post: 176 (Ruger SR9)

The stats for it’s second birthday are:

* 1409 posts
* 9663 comments
* Most comments in a post: 611 (Ruger SR9)

I have to thank my fellow gun bloggers. Without you I probably would not have started blogging and certainty would not have lasted two years!

A big thank you to everyone who has emailed me content, photos and links to interesting things. It is always appreciated.

And thanks to everyone who has commented on the blog. Your comments make the blog significantly more useful for the community, and they encourage me to continue blogging.

I should give a special thanks to, in no particular order, Jay (jdun1911), Daniel E. Watters, Heath, Sven, Matt Groom, REMOV, Mehul Kamdar and Wendell who have each given me a lot of help and content for the blog over the years.

Advanced Long-Range Systems (ALS) have issued a warning:

Advanced Long-Range Systems has identified a condition that may exist with the bolt supplied with the ALS 50 caliber conversion which may allow the gun to fire out of battery.

As all the facts are not yet in, and purely as a safety precaution, ALS is asking owners of its rifle uppers to suspend shooting this product until further notice.

It is our goal to provide safe and accurate products. We are currently working on a solution. Please, bear with us, it may take up to sixty days to complete this task. We will resolve this issue and make it right with our customers.

Once additional information is available, you can rest assured that it will be passed along on our website, in VHP Magazine, and the relevant firearms discussion forums.

A .50 BMG firing out of battery could easily be deadly, not just for the operator but potentially for spectators or the person in the next lane at the range!

More info here.

Hat Tip: Suburban’s Domain

The budget priced Thompson/Center Venture rifle is now shipping. T/C guarantee that it is capable for firing 3 shots in a one inch group at 100 yards. This rifle is going to fly off the shelves!

It will be available chambered in .270, .30-06, 300 Win. Mag., and 7mm Mag. I hope it will be available in a short action soon.

Earlier this year author Neil Strauss published a book about survivalism. I was planning on reading Emergency until I read the Boston Globe review:

Next he takes a course in killing with a knife, during which an instructor named Mad Dog demands that he slaughter a live goat. Strauss also studies wilderness survival, learning to build a shelter from leaves, find water, and live off the land. After getting instruction in shooting, he finds himself changing from wimpy writer to would-be killer: “Something strange had occurred. I developed a bloodlust I’d never felt before. I actually wanted an excuse to shoot a bad guy.”

Taking an animals life is saddening, and I think most hunters would agree. To this day, and even as a child, I could not bring myself to kill a bird, or even a worm for that matter, that was not doing any harm and was not eatable. The so-called blood lust is a myth.

Outdoor and Hunting blogger Albert A Rasch put it succinctly in a post about PETA:

You also refuse to acknowledge that there is more to hunting than killing. You refuse to observe and experience the hard work and perseverance that goes into hunting. I don’t deny that I enjoy hunting. I don’t deny that there is satisfaction in a clean kill. But let me be clear, there is little joy in the actual death of an animal. As many hunters will attest, there is frequently a moment of regret or sadness, but that is tempered by the basic satisfaction that the hunter feels knowing that he can provide and secure sustenance. It does not matter whether it is necessary or not in this day and age of mass produced food, it matters to me, and that is all that matters, regardless of the moral high horse you think you sit on.

UPDATE: I may have been a bit harsh basing my opinion on one line and a few gun bloggers disagree with me. Foxtrot in the comments wrote that he thought the quote was out of context, 1withabullet enjoyed the book and Michael Bane, an outdoor author himself, really enjoyed it.

I still stand my my comments above that going on about blood lust in hunting is a load of hollywood fantasy.

Regardless of the technical merits, numerous methods employed since WWI to shoot around or over cover.

More here.

GunBroker have launched a version of their website optimized for mobile web browsers such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Pre.

It is very simply and bare bones, which is exactly what you want when you need to quickly find out what a certain gun is selling for, after spotting what you think is a bargain at a gun shop or gun show.

I took the below screenshot using the newly released Palm Pre emulator.

The mobile site is at http://m.gunbroker.com

Those hardworking boys at American Rifle have been plinking African style with a double barreled rifles chambered in .470 Nitro Express.

A spectator shouts “Fix bayonets!”

A question to those who know more about these things than me: I noticed that the first rifle shown in the video featured ejectors while the other two rifles did not, Is there any reason not to have ejectors on a dangerous game rifle? In a real-life situation a fast reload could be the difference between taking home a trophy or being taken home in a coffin so I would have thought ejectors would be standard.

Hat Tip: Ed @ Tell Me Why?