A new updated Glock manual has surfaced on the web. I don’t know to credit for sharing this, but it is nice to be able to have the latest literature that you know we will never read.
Update:
Just received this e-mail message from Glock at the Loose Rounds account. So, the Gen5 FBI based G17M and G19M release rumors are now confirmed. I have had one of the Gen5 19s on hold for a few weeks now and will get a detailed review out as soon as its in my hand.
Now just today several writers posted videos who were invited to Glock a few weeks ago to test the Gen5s out. You can check out a video of one below:
Of course you know we will get more detailed in stripping the firearm down as we did with the G42 and G43s.
Duncan
Message bellow:
“This is a special time in the history of GLOCK. On August 30, GLOCK, Inc. will be announcing the launch of our new G17 Gen5 and G19 Gen5 pistols. We wanted you to hear the news first, from us, before the general public finds out.
The G17 Gen5 and G19 Gen5 pistols were inspired by the GLOCK M pistols used by the FBI and include many features the GLOCK community has been asking for. There are over 20 design changes which differentiate our Gen5 pistols from their Gen4 predecessors, including a flared mag-well, a new nDLC finish, the GLOCK Marksman Barrel, ambidextrous slide stop levers, and a grip which has no finger grooves.
These pistols will be available at your favorite GLOCK dealer beginning August 30. We hope you will go in to see them and try them.
Thank you for your continued support.”
When I first read this, it was like the same gut punch when I learned Kevin had passed. I am glad his brother and family have given his friends and fans a chance to have something to remember Kevin by, Something tangible, But. Seeing that large collection of guns,Kevin’s collection of CZ weapons, accumulated over years in support of his effort of writing a book on the subject of CZ weapons, now being sold off sort of finalizes it for me I guess. He is gone, Now his guns, being sold off to the four corners, scattered about. All the stories and memories that went with them lost. The feeling is certainly something Roy Batty would be familiar with.
If you knew Kevin or you are a fan and admire the man, now is a chance to give some of his guns a good home in honor of the man. I bought a small rimfired rifle from the estate earlier and it will hold a place of honor in my collection until I am gone I’m sure. Below is the post with all weapons being sold listed and where to buy them. Now I think i will go mourn Kevin a little more this evening.
It won’t shock you to know that Kevin had a lot of firearms, firearm accessories, knives, bayonets, swords and other military memorabilia.
As we have been cleaning out his house to get it ready for sale this fall, we are selling most of his collection on consignment through Original Bobs Shooting Range & Gun Shops in Seabrook, NH and Salisbury, MA (http://originalbobsshootingrange.com).
There are also two Class 3 firearms that will be made available for sale by MAC Tactical (http://www.mactactical.com/).
This means you have a chance to get something to remember him by. All of these items are for sale NOW or in the near future. Some of them may be gone already. Please contact Original Bob’s or MAC Tactical directly if you are interested. Remember, MAC only has the Class 3’s – everything else is at Original Bob’s.
At the bottom of this post will be a list of his firearms. Original Bob’s has a lot of other items and knows what comes from “The Collection of Kevin O’Brien.”
Now before you ask, yes, I am keeping some of his stuff. But there was never a possibility that I would keep any weapons. I’m not a “weapons man” myself and I would prefer to see his weapons and related items in the hands of people who would enjoy them.
Some of the other most personal items have been distributed to his closest friends. Just the other day the helicopter chair (remember that?) left Kevin’s house for its new home in the Lakes Region of NH. It now belongs to a good friend who served with Kev. Other stuff that honestly holds no sentimental value is going to be sold at an “estate sale” on Saturday, September 9th. Most of his books are going to team members and friends.
I’m keeping all the airplane parts, all the tools, all the “active” computers, a few oddities (did you know Kevin had a recumbent bike?) and a few practical items. I am keeping his diplomas and other military records, his dress uniform, beret and dog tags.
But that leaves a lot for Weaponsman readers, if you want. And somebody else will buy and enjoy whatever is left!
Here is a list of firearms:
Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF)
I received a replacement bolt shroud from Ruger yesterday. The new bolt shroud is on the left, the original on the right.
If you own a Ruger Precision Rifle, I would highly recommend you check if your rifle falls under the safety notice. If it does, get the replacement bolt shroud. It is not good to have a firearm that might not fire when you need it and worse might fire when you don’t want it.
The Ruger Safety Bulletin can be found here.
Continue reading Updated – Safety Bulletin for the Ruger Precision Rifle
Before zeroing the pictured mini red dot sight, it was impacting 4 feet high, and a foot right at 50 yards.
Some time back I really got into the piggy back mini red dot sight (MRDS) on top the ACOG. I’ve also run them on top and offset from higher magnification scopes.
So having started running these offset and piggyback MRDS, I got really curious about how other people were using them. So I asked people, in person and on gun forums.
“Oh, it’s for close range, so it’s not zeroed.”
Now to be fair, there was one person who said he zeroed his at 10 feet. All the rest had their mini red dots unzeroed.
The point of a firearm is to be able to place rounds on a desired target. Be that target a piece of paper, prey, or a hostile combatant, we index our firearm on the target in order to achieve that effect on target. We use our sights to verify that the firearm is aligned and indexed with the target.
It is pointless to have an unzeroed optic.
“But Howard, I’m only going to use the red dot at super close range.”
At close range is there it is most important that your shots are effective. If you have a less than ideal hit on a bad guy 500 yards out and they take a few minutes to bleed to death, that would just be a shame. But if up close you fail to instantly neutralize a target, the result could be deadly for you, or those you care about.
The big downsize to having these secondary miniature sights is odd height over bore or offset issues. These issues can lead to these offset sights being massively off, like the one pictured above. Offset sights are usually sitting on a stack of mounts attached to a handguard that may or may not be parallel with the bore. It can be very easy to be multiple feet off target at close ranges with an unzeroed offset sight. Your average sight on an AR15 is 2.6 inches over the bore. A piggy back red dot can easily be 4+ inches over the bore. This height over bore makes picking a good zero difficult.
There is going to be a part 2 to this article, where I will go over some of your options when zeroing an offset or piggyback MRDS.
Swords and sword-fighting are a long time issue of ours, and once we’ve gotten past our amusement with the Russian and Russophile fascination with shovel fighting, we know that the art of sword fighting was once the peak of combat effect, and it seems obvious that the best guides to that art would be found in historical materials from that period.
Of course, sword-fighting never went away from popular culture, and it’s been a staple of Hollywood for nearly a century. But one has an instinctive feeling that Hollywood’s choreographed swordfights are as phony as their fist- and gun-fights; and that they’re doing it wrong. Sword expert J. Clements of the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts agrees in a long essay:
It is the stuff of Hollywood sword-fights and renaissance-faire fight shows: a swordsman cuts with his or her blade and in defense the opponent lifts their own sword to directly receive the blow at 90-degrees on the center of their blade. The two blades clash in the middle edge-on-edge with a loud “clang!” There is just one problem. No two cutting-swords—historical or replica, authentic or modern, Asian or European —would withstand such abuse without their edges being severely gouged in the process. This is a problematic issue of historical fencing exploration that can be addressed reasonably and factually.
When it comes to historical swordsmanship, such a description stands in direct contrast to how edged weapons were actually handled and employed. It contradicts the very dynamic of effective and efficient fighting and resembles little in the way of sword combat described in Medieval and Renaissance fencing literature.
He goes on at rather great length about the historical sources, so it’s worth reading the whole thing. But here’s another taste:
In the chronicle of the deeds of the 15th century knight, Don Pero Niño, we read how in a fight against the Moors, “the blows fell upon good armour, though not so good but that it was broken and bent in many places. The sword he used was like a saw, toothed in great notches, the hilt twisted by dint of striking mighty blows, and all dyed in blood.” At the end of the siege of the City of Tuy in 1397, we are also told again how Niño’s sword “blade was toothed like a saw and dyed with blood.” Later, Pero Niño sent this sword by a page to France, “with other presents to my Lady of Serifontaine.” (De Gamez, p. 196.) Given the context of this description, where Nino’s shield, armor, and sword are all damaged from especially heavy fighting, it would not seem unreasonable that he then gives his ruined sword away as a token of his chivalric courage. Certainly, we have no way of knowing if his sword edge was damaged from striking armor and shield rims or from striking other blades, let alone from parrying cuts (something less likely if he had a shield and full armor as described). Regardless, the recognition that Nino’s sword edge had sustained heavy damaged so that it looked “like a saw” and was “toothed in great notches” from use is indicative that such a condition was certainly not a good thing for a functional blade. Above all, he did not enter combat with his prized weapon in such a condition.
Yes, that’s one single dense paragraph in the original.
Now, perhaps some of this is the well-known tendency for martial arts entrepreneurs to see no merit in, and consequently trash-talk, their competitors. An example which seems to be Clements doing just that is here. But Clements’s approach of going back to period sources is to be commended. There is a great deal more information on the site.
HURSTWIC is an organization which takes a similar approach, not to the combat of the 13th through 15th centuries but to the earlier Viking era. Theirs, too, is an approach that combines archival research (in this case, in Norse sagas, mostly) with athletics. Compared to Renaissance and even medieval European sources, of course, Viking primary sources are few and this gives rise to some problems of interpretation. A page on Sword and Shield Combat Technique is one of many restatements of this problem on the Hurstwic site:
[W]e don’t really know how weapons were used in the Viking age. We don’t have any material that teaches us how Vikings used their weapons. The best we can do is to make some educated guesses based on a number of sources, as described in an earlier article.
This article summarizes some of the fighting moves we believe were used by Vikings when fighting with sword and shield. Not surprisingly, as we continue our research, my opinions on the nature of Viking-age combat have changed. Our interpretation of the moves is always in flux. So, please be aware that the techniques illustrated in these web articles may not always represent our most current interpretation. Notably, in the past, we have depended more heavily on the later combat treatises than we currently do. That bias remains in this and other articles on the Hurstwic site. We plan to edit the articles to reduce those biases as time permits and as our research unfolds.
Our most current interpretation is outlined in the article on the “shape” of Viking combat and illustrated by several videos on that page showing fighting moves from the sagas.
That article s found here and it is fascinating to watch the Hurstwic team grapple with these mysteries, to understand ancient armed combat, as they have only a few sources. Even these few have their limits: the sparse descriptions in the sagas, the known characteristics of Viking weapons, and their own powers of logic. Their own opinions have changed as their knowledge has grown, which is inevitable in a scientific approach to almost anything. They are keenly aware that their scientific approach rests on a foundation of assumptions, but what they’re doing is extremely interesting.
Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).
Back in 2006, while I was in Iraq, I purchased a Spec Ops Brand THE Wallet JR. I’ve been using it ever since. This weekend, one of the zipper pulls broke off. I had forgotten it had zippers.
Over the years I have owned a variety of S.O.B. gear. It has always been well made, but a little on the large and clunky side. Their X4 and X6 pouches are excellent utility pouches. Their lone downside is a fringe around the outside making it hard to put another pouch directly next to it. S.O.B.’s belts, vest, chest rig, and other products are all excellent.
This wallet is no exception. Tons of pockets, slots, and places to stick things. The main compartment is sized for US Dollars and has a zippered pocket. It has a windowed pocket on the outside and inside of the wallet. 4 credit card slots that can hold multiple cards. I also stick cards in the folds of fabric for those slots. And an additional zippered credit card sized pocket on the inside. The main feature of this wallet is its “shark-bite” closure, which is a sort of rigid flap that holds the wallet close. Easily opened and closed.
The only downside to this simple, heavy duty wallet it its thickness. The “shark bite” flap makes the wallet thicker on top of the thick nylon and cordura fabric. Once you stick a few hundred dollars in the wallet it becomes quite plump.
This is probably not the right wallet for most people, but I love the one I have.