Michale Bane reports that Colt has been sold to General Dynamics. Lots of speculation in comments there on what this could mean for the gun market.
Update: Kim notes:
. . . it will be sold as two distinct entities: military (M4 rifles and a seeekrit plastic pistol) and civilian (SAA, Python, Diamondback, 1911 etc).
Behind my property is a farm. This farmer has some beef cattle. Right now, one of those cows is giving birth. In the event you’ve never heard the sound a cow makes while giving birth, consider yourself lucky.
Every time I leave a comment, it gets kicked to the spam filter. It even does this when my site shows me as logged in. You’d think Spam Karma 2 would be smart enough to notice that if I’m logged in as a power user that my comment is spam free.
Jay has a post on gun cleaning. Check it out. By the way, I am convinced that whoever invented the Boresnake needs a Nobel prize or something.
I’m not sure why but a few bloggers are telling me I should have a Danish. I did. It was delicious. But I’m much more of a donut sort of guy.
CounterTop posts the results of the the first round of the gunnies. They are:
Best Gun Pr0n – Oleg Volk
Most Educational – Mr. Completely
Best Rants – Kim du Toit
Best Legal Analysis – John Lott
Best Aggregator – Alphecca
Best Range Reports – Mr. Completely
Best Commentary – The Smallest Minority
The Anarchangel
Argghhh!
mAss Backwards
Would it have killed you people to actually vote for me? I kid. All those people were better than me in their respective category. I’m more of a generalist gun blogger.
Counter is offering a prize too. Cool. Congrats to the winners.
Oleg has a good piece on how the free market affects the development of rifles:
Logistically, the G36 and its now-discontinued civilian variant SL8 are dependent on HK for service and parts. Unlike the AR15 and the AKM derivatives, these rifles do not enjoy wide aftermarket support. The same is even more true of the P90, of which no civilian version even exists. The availability of parts and of armorer expertise strongly favors the established designs produced by several manufacturers.
The situation is a result of two factors. The first is the obstacles placed by the US laws on the way of any company wishing to make or import modern small arms for civilian use. The severity of that problem varies over time but adds restrictions and uncertainty to any business plans. The second is the reluctance of some companies, notably H&K, to even consider the civilian market as important. In the US, that civilian market is large, diverse and, in effect, an extended beta test of any new or improved weapon system. Not selling to individuals cuts off an important source of feedback on the ergonomics and reliability. Gaming software companies understand that and market variants of the army training simulators to the public at large.
There’s a great deal more and you should read, particularly the various safety and reliability problems with the FN P90 and the H&K G36. Notably that the 5.7 round is only as effective as a 22 magnum. And, also, FN recently started selling the FN P90 in a civilian version, though various sources report that the wait time to get one is over one year. That said, this is precisely why I do not buy any H&K products. Not even their high reliability AR magazines or hats. They’ve essentially told us gun loving civilians that they will not cater to us, unless we want a USP or a sporterized rifle, like the SL-8. I’m a rifle sort of guy and I like them to look and function a certain way. The more they look like they’d give Diane Feinstein a conniption, the more I want one. If they made a G36 and an XM-8 in a civilian configuration, I’d buy one of each. With H&K’s financial issues, maybe they’ll reconsider and focus a bit on us civilians.
The other issue that the lack of a market creates is there will be no new rifle for the military developed in the US. US gun makers (except for Colt) rely heavily on the civilian market. No one is going to develop the next assault rifle unless they can immediately make money off of it and US military contracts are way off in the future. Sure, there’s the occasional smaller company that caters to them but they seem to do so more from a hobbyist standpoint than a business standpoint.
Regarding the AR-15, the facts are it is the longest serving rifle in US military history. Lasted longer than the Garand and the M1A. The reason is it’s a damn fine rifle. It has some problems but they can be fixed. Those problems are the dirty gas system (it eats where it shits) and the less than effective round that the military uses. There are already fixes for those, such as a switch to the 6.8SPC or the 6.5 Grendel rounds and switching the gas tube system with a gas piston system. And these fixes came from the market. Billy Bob tinkering in his garage probably came up with the first piston system and a hobbyist created the 6.5 Grendel. Also, the fact is that the XM-8 only fixed one of those problems because it fires the same 5.56 round the AR-15 does.
Addressing the market’s impact on guns, Marko writes:
. . . there’s only so much you can do to a HK91 or a G36, despite the Lego-like nature of the latter. The problem is that it’s the wrong kind of Lego…H&K intended the G36 to be modular so it could be switched from a rifle to a carbine to a light machine gun in a hurry, but it’s modular only in that it can be reconfigured to meet military mission needs without having to invest in three different weapon systems. It’s Armorer/Supplier Lego, which looks great on paper.
The AR, on the other hand, can be turned into a varminter, a match rifle, a rimfire plinker, a pistol caliber carbine, a service rifle, a commando carbine, a large-bore specialty gun and a capable sniper rifle just by pushing out a few pins and swapping out a few user-changeable parts. That’s true modularity, and because of it the AR is far more flexible than any other centerfire rifle. It’s User Lego, fun in a box, do-what-you-want, and 90% of the AR uppers on the market simply wouldn’t be available if the only AR customers were government armorers. No wonder the design keeps trucking despite its length in service.
I’m going to have to disagree a bit and state that the reason the AR and 1911 are modular is because they’ve both been around for decades. And the market made the modifications. The AR did not start out modular and only really became so in the 1980s with the development and wide use of the M4 carbine. Not sure when the 1911 got all gun geek on us. If the G36 were available to civilians, was on the market for a while, and had a wide customer base, it would become modular because folks would make adjustments to it. The market is why you can get free floating barrels, modular rail systems, stocks with better cheek-welds and just about any caliber you could want for AR carbines. Not because the military asked for them. The same would happen for the G36, if it had a market.
I expressed sadness before that if the military adopted the XM-8 that it would be the first time in US history that the military’s main battle rifle would not be available to citizens (and for you purists, it’s actually the second as the M4 carbine was not released prior to 1986 but some civilians converted their NFA registered M-16s to M-4s). And I think it’s safe to say that without citizens, the US military wouldn’t have its current battle rifle.
Bust Off at Subguns.com is reporting that the ATF is dragging ass regarding Michigan’s new rules on NFA weapons:
ATF has not made any official public statements as to how they will treat Michigan persons attempting to file transfer forms for NFA regulated items such as transferable machine guns and suppressors. As you are aware Michigan has gone from being a C&R only state to a transferable state at least in regards to state law. The ATF still can not believe this has happened and believe me I expect their working overtime trying to find a way to defeat us and in fact thumb their collective noses at us.
There’s a ton more info there and he advocates contacting your congress monkeys.
No, really. WBIR is talking about kids maybe posting too much personal info on blogs or myspace accounts. Busy Mom was on that three days ago.
No, really:
Backed by abortion rights groups, three Massachusetts women sued Wal-Mart on Wednesday, accusing the retail giant of violating a state regulation by failing to stock emergency contraception pills in its pharmacies.
The plaintiffs argued that state policy requires pharmacies to provide all “commonly prescribed medicines.”
Wal-Mart carries the morning-after pill in Illinois only, where it is required under state law, said Dan Fogleman, a spokesman for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart.
First, the morning after pill isn’t exactly contraception, which is defined as prevention of conception or impregnation. Second, are these people serious? And third, seriously, the state of Illinois demands that stores carry products?
The fact the state can mandate that an establishment has to carry something strikes me as an overreach on the part of the government. Next, they’ll mandate that all stores have to sell ink jet cartridges or Vaseline. I realize, of course, that things of a medical nature may warrant some sort of regulation to ensure that people have the best medical care but those people can also shop somewhere else.
SayUncle: Scrubbed by Google (which explains the decline in traffic. Anyone know how to fix that?)
SayUncle: Banned in China by Google. ETA: probably due to the aforementioned scrubbing.
Update: Regarding point one, it’s not that I’m a traffic whore or anything but the extra cash from the ads is nice, being unemployed and all. Also, I’ve not sold many blog ads lately either due to reduced traffic. That and it’s just darn weird.
Update 2: It’s not all bad as my referral logs aren’t blurred by Google searches. It gives me a better idea where readers come from.
Whenever I see this quote:
Are you pondering what I’m pondering, Pinky?
Automatically, my response is:
Uh, I think so, Brain, but where will we find a duck and a hose at this hour?
or
Uh, I think so, Brain, but we’ll never get a monkey to use dental floss.
More PATB quotes here.
Ah, Chicago:
Mayor Daley on Monday embraced a radical plan to require every licensed Chicago business open more than 12 hours a day to install indoor and outdoor cameras.
“Block clubs, community organizations want cameras. … They can’t walk down the street. … Their kids have to go around a corner away from the gang-bangers. You can’t walk to church. You can’t get on the CTA. … Cameras really prevent much crime. Cameras also solve a lot of crime. The terrorist attacks in London were solved by cameras. The whole incident was solved by cameras,” Daley said.
So, for safety, businesses would have to drop some major coin on camera systems. Or lose some major coin by closing earlier. That’s a bit of an overreach of government authority, wouldn’t you think?
Xrlq notes that some legislators appear to have fallen for the NOW/NARAL/Boxer “just one vote” lie.
The JPFO wants to know if you’ve been contacted by the ATF:
Congress will do nothing to stop BATFE abuses of gun owners unless Congress hears from us loud and clear. Courts won’t protect our rights until they realize that our rights are being violated. Our publicizing the Glover matter – including the video of the botched BATFE “test” of the alleged “machine gun” – has already sent shockwaves through BATFE. That was just one example. Imagine the effects when we can report dozens, even hundreds of examples of BATFE harassment, hostility, heavy-handedness, and oppressive conduct!
Junior has this habit now of taking off her clothes. I hope she outgrows it soon or at least before she’s a teenager. She sleeps in jammies that have a zipper and got into the habit of unzipping them before bedtime. The solution to this was a safety pin inserted into the hole of the zipper’s pull tab and attaching it to the fabric of her jammies.
The night before last, I was putting on her jammies when she started flailing about. I was stabbed in the index finger by the safety pin. It hurt and I said quite loudly:
Ow, shit!
Now, I (like most parents) avoid cussing in front of my child. But in this case, I couldn’t help it. See, the safety pin went through one side of my index finger and came out the other. It really, really hurt. And it looked bad. Junior, almost without hesitation, smiled and said quite loudly:
Shit
Actually, she struggles with her Sh sound at this age so it sounded more like Sthit. I thought What have I done? She only said it once and the Mrs. and I didn’t acknowledge that I said it and that she repeated it. So, she didn’t really get too excited about her new word and has not said it since. Good.
Pete, taking a cue from me, looks at workers comp insurance rates and their effect on company drug policies. The last two companies I’ve worked for, I was the one who dealt with our insurance. You get a discount on your insurance if you implement a Drug Free Workplace policy. Pete tells us that these policies don’t really make work safer.
Head is pretty much the definitive source for info on Kalashnikov rifles in the gunblogosphere. Check out his AK Buying Primer. Good stuff.
I only caught about 20 minutes. Was it just me or did the first few minutes of the speech seem to appeal to conservatives who were disenchanted with the administration?
Aunt B. is giving this Libertarianism thing a try. I think she picked the more crazy variety to start with instead of the more, err, moderate sorts (the small libertarians, libertarianish, neo-libertarian, or whatever we’re calling ourselves his week). Don’t let the loony variety scare you away forever.
Catfish has a post on why you should shoot in competitions:
By competing, you’ll quickly learn if your gun works, your holster works, your mags work, your bullets work, etc etc etc. I have personally seen many new shooters step to the line and draw their holster with their gun, their mags with their mag pouches or have their latest and greatest gun break. The sad fact is that there’s a lot of junk out there that’s being sold to you – and that includes everything from guns and equipment to the oil you use.
Read it all.
The veto override for CCW in Wisconsin has failed.
Update: Don’t lose hope:
Some Northeastern Wisconsin legislators said that despite Tuesday’s failed override attempt of the concealed-carry bill, it’s inevitable that a citizen’s right-to-carry a firearm will someday become state law.
“It’s only a matter of time before a concealed carry bill passes,” said Rep. Phil Montgomery, R-Ashwaubenon.
I’d mentioned before how it’d be neat to have an airsoft replica of the my handguns to shoot in the garage. Well, Marc has the skinny on his Airsoft 1911 clone:
These high quality airsoft pistols are amazing pieces of equipment. The controls all work the same as a real pistol. 6mm plastic bbs (this takes .2 gram or heavier) load into the magazine and the magazine has a reservoir to hold the compressed gas that powers these pistols so as long as you have loaded magazines you can keep on going with no worry that the GUN will run out of gas.
May have to look into one.
R. Neal tells us the Governor’s construction budget has earmarked $2M for the project, even though the project is supposedly done for. If I were a betting man, I’d wager there will be a push for it again.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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