All posts by Howard

Survival & Prepping

Just got back home after Irma.

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The acronym SHTF has gotten quite popular in the past few years.

I remember that it used to be popular to say that your preparations were for fighting off the inevitable Russian or Chinese invasion, sometimes instead the Blue Helmets were mentioned.  I’d tend to think Blue Helmets would be a Turkey Shoot, but lets hope it never comes to that.

Now days the common excuse is zombies, that one is prepping for zombies.

I just got back to my home after hurricane Irma.  Fortunately my home weathered the storm well, but some of my neighbors have extensive damage to their roofs.

Don’t fall too far into fantasy when you are prepping, there are all manner of real world problems that can cause the proverbial shit to hit the fan.

Scattered Shots

Updated – Safety Bulletin for the Ruger Precision Rifle

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New Ruger Bolt Shroud

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 →

Scattered Shots

Zero your damn MRDS.

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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.

Reviews

T.H.E. Wallet J.R.

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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.

Scattered Shots

WTF Autoglove?

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So I was just informed about the “Autoglove”.

Picture taken from their website, click on the picture to visit their website.

It is a glove with some sort of electronic plunger to press a firearms trigger for you quickly.

First, stuff like this goes to show how stupid our gun laws are.

Secondly, you have to be impressed with how the free market will come up with a solution to any perceived problem.

Third, I am very curious if this will actually be approved by the ATF or not.  Previously they did not allow for the electric actuating of triggers.

I wouldn’t recommend this thing to anyone.  I believe you would quickly see shooters lose control of weapons with it.  What we really need is this unconstitutional NFA act abolished so silly law work arounds would be unnecessary.

Scattered Shots

Arms Unlimited Shipping

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I work at a company that makes a great product at a good price.  We pack our product individually in padded envelops in a cardboard box.  That is one thing I think is rather hokey and could be done in a way that would look a great deal more professional.  One of our competitors sold their product in a box with custom cut foam.  I think that made their product look to be high end.  Now they replaced that with shrink wrapping their product to a piece of cardboard.  Now that cheap, crappy looking, and is just annoying for the customer.

I recently made a purchase from Arms Unlimited.  They have some good prices and they are now also offering a knock off of the Norgon ambidextrous magazine catch for the AR15.

I was very disappointed when I received the parts I ordered loose in a USPS shipping bag.  The bolt carrier groups, gas tube, and forward assist that I ordered were all scratched up from rubbing against each other.  Not very impressive.

But, I did get what I needed, and with any luck I’ll have a review of the Arms Unlimited Norgon knockoff for you guys soon.

Scattered Shots

How low will they go?

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$360 dollar AR15 for sale here.

Prices on guns are at an amazingly low price.  I know that gunshops I have talked to are hurting for sales.  Now is really the best time to buy if there is something you want, and a terrible time to be selling.

To paraphrase a quote, “The problem with being in a golden age is that you don’t know it is a golden age when you are in it.”  Take advantage of this time while it lasts.