Things We Learn At The Deer Rifle Sight-in (2005 Part Deux)

Once more into the breach...

image courtesy of wikimedia commons

I worked the second to the last deer rifle sight in day today. You guessed it, Remington selfloading rifles turned out in droves. About half were wearing see thru scope mounts (more on these abominations another time). None were shot well. The Browning BARs held their own, as did the Remington pumps. No Winchester 100 rifles but there was one 88 levergun. A couple guys with new Remington 710s were doing their best to shoot minute-of-buck at 200 yards. As usual the slug hunters with 20 bores shot better than those with 12 bores.

A large crew of Hmong hunters showed up with brand new Mossberg package guns, some in 20 gauge, others in 12. Several still had the oval blue and yellow logo sticker on the buttstock. My two clients eschewed the 25 yard line and started at 50. Within ten rounds each they had dialed in 50 yard zeroes and said "Good enough". It was interesting to coach through a translator. Each member of their family must be testing different ammo as one was using Federal Barnes coppers, another Winchester Platinum Partitions, another the ICBM-looking Hornady plastic-tipped jobs, and yet another was shooting a flatpoint full diameter hammer I'd never heard of before made by the Heavishot people.

I saw one Savage package gun break. It shot great for the son at the 25 but dad could scarcely keep them on the paper at 50. Turns out one of two screws holding the rear scope ring together stripped out giving the scope a sad case of the side to side wobbles. Back to the sporting goods store with less than a week before the opener.

Another father son team were working out with grandpa's old Remington M700. It shot okay but didn't feed very well and sometimes the bolt wouldn't go forward at all. We popped the floorplate latch to dump the rounds several times. The follower wouldn't come out very easily or go back in very easily. The bottom metal seems to stand a little proud from the stock. Then it became suddenly obvious. Sometime in the rifle's history someone had disassembled the rifle and put it back together with the magazine box in upside down. Yeah, you can do that...sorta. We set things right with many thanks from the owners and to the oohs and aahs of the gallery. This M700 was old enough that one has to turn the safety off to cycle the action so later, while the son fumbled to open the action, he touched off a round without intending to.  Very exciting.  Keep your finger off the trigger until the sights are on target!

Home and dry, I will park my body armor in the closet until next year's festivities...

Speaking Truth to Power

Is not always appreciated...

It seems Army Col. Lawrence Sellin didn't much like what he encountered during his assignment as a staff officer at the NATO International Security Assistance Force Joint Command in Kabul, Afghanistan.  So he wrote an Op Ed about it for UPI.  Oops...not a resume enhancing maneuver.  Needless to say his assignment has been terminated (gratefully not with extreme prejudice).  It certainly looks like he violated some very clear standing orders against communicating with the media without submitting it to public relations in advance, but who among us has not suffered through a death by powerpoint presentation?  Hopefully, Mr. Sellin will continue writing for UPI.

Danger Room!

Been following the WIRED Danger Room blog off and on for a while now...

Subtitled "What's Next in National Security" the Danger Room has assembled a team of writers who are smart and smart-assed, serious and snarky.  They love sticking it to dumb ideas hatched in the "homeland security space," but report on serious stuff too.  Among other titles their sub-categories include Darpawatch, Less-Lethal, and Paper Pusher, Beltway Bandits, Politicians.  What can I say?  I have a soft spot for talented irreverence.

The Battle for God

Karen Armstrong has an incisive intellect and a strong voice...

If you care to understand the origins and impact of fundamentalism in the world's three monotheistic religious traditions this is a fine place to start.  This book was purchased with one of the best dollars I ever spent at a library book sale!

Blow Ups Happen

From an email shared with friends (and posted on Usenet) way back on 23 September 1996...

Saw a rifle blow up at the range Sunday. Actually, I just missed seeing it explode, but I heard it let go. There was an unusual report and I turned to see a large cloud of gray smoke enveloping a man sitting at his shooting bench. He was holding the back half of what used to be - and I mean used to be - a Remington 7400 semiautomatic rifle. Fortunately this unlucky fellow was wearing safety glasses when he touched off his first round of the day and suffered only a bruise to his left elbow and some minor cuts and scratches to his hands, arms, and face.

The barrel and foreend - minus some shattered wood splinters - were found in one piece in front of the bench. The scope was bent and its mounts destroyed. The wood buttstock was shattered through the wrist. The action was catastrophically disassembled. The action of the rifle was peeled open like a banana. The trigger group was held in only by the rear pin. The bolt head was eventually found, with approximately half of each locking lug smeared off (this was the newer Remington Woodsmaster with four lugs, not the old nine lug artillery style lock-up). There was a fresh half inch by inch and a half hole in the plywood divider between the shooter and the fellow shooting next to him. Whatever punched the hole was not found; neither was any sign of the cartridge case head. The magazine was smashed and ejected from the action and the several of the unfired cartridges were knocked open.  The remaining cartridges held the strongest clue for what had happened.

Initially the range officers thought rifle somehow fired out of battery, but as the broken open cartridges were being collected for photographs they noticed there appeared to be two kinds of powder lying on the bench. There were both small grained spherical pistol powder and the extruded grains of IMR 4831 rifle powder the shooter said he'd used to assemble the loads. He said he metered his charges into the pan and then trickled them to weight on a scale. At the time I left the speculation was that, as a handloader of both pistol and rifle cartridges, he had not completely emptied his meter of pistol powder before loading his rifle rounds. This was not authoritatively established. Maybe it was just an overcharge (or undercharge). Perhaps the rifle was out of battery when it was fired. We'll likely never know. I do know I've got even more respect for the 50,000 pounds per square inch operating pressures we handloaders and shooters manipulate at the loading bench and on the range.

Go carefully.