Was that a Warren Zafron reference?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Was that a Warren Zafron reference?

Zevon. "Stay away from him, he'll pull your lungs out, Jim! I'd like to meet his tailor."

Which brings us to the topic of silver bullets, I suppose.

Kinda pricey, and they don't take the rifling very well.

Besides the price, it is that silver shrinks a bit when cast. It would be very difficult to make a silver bullet that was the correct size for modern firearms without using a CNC machine. That is done for premium solid copper projectiles a lot though, so you could do it as a special order. You'd be looking at ~$40-50 bullets tho. Which honestly if vampires were real wouldn't be a horrible pricepoint...

Once you did that, silver would be fine as a projectile. It's only slightly softer than copper(2.8 vs 3.0 Mohs) and a bit harder than lead(1.5) so it would grip the rifling just fine, again assuming you have CNC'd a bullet to the proper dimensions and not cast it.

It would be easier to make silver bullets for guns that don't use metallic cartridges. There are hand-presses for making round and conical bullets out of pure lead just by squishing it into the mould, and with some muscle power you could do it with silver too and not have to worry about the shrinkage of casting.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Besides the price, it is that silver shrinks a bit when cast. It would be very difficult to make a silver bullet that was the correct size for modern firearms without using a CNC machine. That is done for premium solid copper projectiles a lot though, so you could do it as a special order. You'd be looking at ~$40-50 bullets tho. Which honestly if vampires were real wouldn't be a horrible pricepoint...

Incendiary ammo is much more cost-effective.

Once you did that, silver would be fine as a projectile. It's only slightly softer than copper(2.8 vs 3.0 Mohs) and a bit harder than lead(1.5) so it would grip the rifling just fine, again assuming you have CNC'd a bullet to the proper dimensions and not cast it.

The info I had was someone who used cast silver, which would have been the norm unless you think the Lone Ranger or Van Helsing had access to CNC machines.

It would be easier to make silver bullets for guns that don't use metallic cartridges. There are hand-presses for making round and conical bullets out of pure lead just by squishing it into the mould, and with some muscle power you could do it with silver too and not have to worry about the shrinkage of casting.

At that point, just use the cool silver nitrate round from Underworld.

Just bought a Browning auto 5 the other day. 340 euros, gunsmith tax accounted for. I still need to get a hold of a sling and the attachment but that's quite easy to find on the internet (naturabuy for the win) around 50 euros.

That's quite a decent price here in France really.

I'm gonna use it for short range in my shooting range, wanted to go with the AK but they weren't too stoked about this.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Pretty sure I saw a Spitfire doing what I must assume was a test flight the other day.

The genuine joys of living on the Kent Coast!

When I lived in York I was lucky enough to regularly see the last flying Vulkan bomber practicing for airshows (it was based on an old Bomber Command airstrip just outside York where the air museum is). I saw it for a couple of years until it finally retired to a museum for safety reasons.

Absolutely majestic vehicle, yet so terrifying in potential armament. Fascinating to watch such a large plane manoeuvre so well.

Re: silver bullets: depends on how the magic works. Do you need a solid silver bullet to follow the rules of the magic system or can you just use silver core/tip rounds for a normal gun? Fill the tip of a hollow point with a bit of silver (or a splinter of wood for a stake, etc) and good hunting.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
Re: silver bullets: depends on how the magic works. Do you need a solid silver bullet to follow the rules of the magic system or can you just use silver core/tip rounds for a normal gun? Fill the tip of a hollow point with a bit of silver (or a splinter of wood for a stake, etc) and good hunting.

This reminds me of a World of Darkness adventure I saw back in the 1990s. The players gradually learn that there are werewolf hunters about and one of the clues is a rudimentary range where the backstop (a large stump) is filled with silver bullets.

You know, because silver is dirt cheap, prefect for target practice and why bother to recover it once the boomstick went bang?

A classic example of something with just enough knowledge of guns to beclown themselves.

Depends on how rare silver actually is. IRL its actually not that rare for a precious metal.

Or, more importantly, how well paid werewolf hunters are in the setting. If you're rich enough it's not worth bothering to recover the silver.

Question.
Does any one know if 60 round ar15 Magazines are the same size as AK47 Magazines ?
My google-fu has failed me.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Depends on how rare silver actually is. IRL its actually not that rare for a precious metal.

Silver isn't rare, but it is expensive if you're loading a lot of rounds. And then using them for practice.

The simple expedient of setting up a shot trap would have made the scene less silly. I recall when we read it we tried to calculate how much money they basically left there for someone else to pick up. Not quite lighting cigars with $100 bills, but very close to it.

 warhead01 wrote:
Question.
Does any one know if 60 round ar15 Magazines are the same size as AK47 Magazines ?
My google-fu has failed me.

Which 60 round AR mags? Which AK mags?

There are 60 round single drum mags and 60 round quad-stack mags.

If you are comparing them to a normal 30 round AK mag they are quite a bit bigger and heavier, though length-wise sticking out of the gun the AK mag is still a little longer.


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Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Depends on how rare silver actually is. IRL its actually not that rare for a precious metal.

Silver isn't rare, but it is expensive if you're loading a lot of rounds. And then using them for practice.

The simple expedient of setting up a shot trap would have made the scene less silly. I recall when we read it we tried to calculate how much money they basically left there for someone else to pick up. Not quite lighting cigars with $100 bills, but very close to it.

Well, they may have been planning on returning eventually.

Plus using the silver bullets to practice with isn't as silly as it seems. If you used other ammunition to practice it would perform differently to the silver bullets just due to different ballistic properties(weight, etc...)

Not that practicing with other rounds would be unrealistic. Lots of people don't practice with their carry loads, instead using cheaper ball ammo. But you should practice with the ammo you carry with and might actually use in a situation.

And I would imagine that werewolf hunters would probably need to charge a lot of money simply to cover the costs of ammo, plus the risk factors involved.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Silver isn't rare, but it is expensive if you're loading a lot of rounds. And then using them for practice.

The simple expedient of setting up a shot trap would have made the scene less silly. I recall when we read it we tried to calculate how much money they basically left there for someone else to pick up. Not quite lighting cigars with $100 bills, but very close to it.

It depends on how well-funded werewolf hunters are. If it's like the US navy routinely dumping expensive missiles in the ocean because of maximum landing weight limits then worrying about used ammunition is for poor people. If they're struggling to make a decent wage then yeah, they should be recovering the silver.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Silver isn't rare, but it is expensive if you're loading a lot of rounds. And then using them for practice.

The simple expedient of setting up a shot trap would have made the scene less silly. I recall when we read it we tried to calculate how much money they basically left there for someone else to pick up. Not quite lighting cigars with $100 bills, but very close to it.

It depends on how well-funded werewolf hunters are. If it's like the US navy routinely dumping expensive missiles in the ocean because of maximum landing weight limits then worrying about used ammunition is for poor people. If they're struggling to make a decent wage then yeah, they should be recovering the silver.

The US government is uniquely profligate. I'm too lazy to research 90s silver prices, punch it in to a constant dollar calculator and determine what it would be today.

But I have just enough energy to see that submachinegun (pistol) ammo would be something silly like $5 per round just for the silver content alone. That's nonsense on stilts.

As to training vs carry, it isn't difficult to find a cheaper proxy that has the same point of impact (or one that is consistent so you can adjust for it) as your carry ammo.

It was clear from the way it was written that the "hunters" were a bunch of bubbas shooting up a stump in anticipation of an ambush, and the writer had no idea exactly how much cash was being squandered.

I should mention that the game had extremely abstract combat rules, so that level of detail ("Their point of aim will be 2 inches lower at 25 yards") would have been wildly inappropriate.

It was someone who knew just enough about guns to make a funny mistake.

Why not use a jacketed hollowpoint with a silver core?

The ballistics won't be that much different from a standard jacketed hollowpoint, so you could use those for practice.

Weirdly, I've been thinking about this recently since I'm working on a story where a wizard uses an enchanted Red Nine for personal defense.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Why not use a jacketed hollowpoint with a silver core?

That's what I suggested earlier, and it depends on how the magic works. Is a "silver bullet" a bullet of pure silver or does any quantity of silver magically interfere with the werewolf magic and destroy it on contact? Does a "stake through the heart" have a minimum size for the magic to consider it a valid attack, or does a tiny splinter delivered by a rifle shot through the heart count? Or perhaps it's all a moot point because there is a sacred and unbreakable agreement between the forces of Good and Evil that neither side will use modern technology even if it theoretically could work. Etc. It's all magic so it has no single correct answer, it's just a question of what theme and aesthetic elements you want to have for your story/setting.

Silver as a cure/ward against the supernatural may well stem from handwavium explanations for its now known antibacterial properties.

If so? Then one could argue the greater the volume of silver, the hurtier it is.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Silver as a cure/ward against the supernatural may well stem from handwavium explanations for its now known antibacterial properties.

If so? Then one could argue the greater the volume of silver, the hurtier it is.

It has been reported that the 20-lb Parrott muzzle loading rifle's silver ammunition was 100% effective against all targets, living and unliving, up to 2,000 yards.

Of course, the subsequent development of breach-loading artillery resulted in even better performance, and it was noted that as the weight of shell increased, the required silver content was reduced to only a few grains.

That would certainly represent one end of the Harry Potter to Harry Dresden scale of technology vs. magic.

And, if Supernatural taught us anything?

A woodchipper seems to beat anything!

What about the ole, sink them to the ground of the sea/ lake?

Not Online!!! wrote:
What about the ole, sink them to the ground of the sea/ lake?

Not really firearm-related, unless they're anchored with a spear gun or something.

Since we're on the topic, my take on vampires (The Vampires of Michigan, visit www.ahlloyd.com to buy your copy today!) is that they regenerate very fast, don't like sunlight, but sufficient trauma (like blowing them up) does the trick. Severed body parts stay severed, and while the vampire code prohibits unlawful execution, cutting ears/fingers off is something of a gray area.

And it leaves a very lasting reminder.

Lots of guns in that book, btw. One of the protagonists uses a Manurhin revolver to deadly effect.

Speaking of Manurhin, anyone own any? In addition to the iconic revolvers, for a time they made Walther PPs. Some say the quality was better than the ones made in Germany because Walther's QC people were total pricks, looking for any excuse to fail one.

Well the Winchesters did chain an immortal Doctor who had to keep replacing worn out body parts in a fridge then bury him in the middle of nowhere, so that kinda counts?

Also as per World of Darkness, the trouble with shooting Vampires is their bodies, being dead, are naturally trickier to inflict damage on, unless you’re targeting the head or limbs. Certainly they’re not going to bleed out or go into shock.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
What about the ole, sink them to the ground of the sea/ lake?

Not really firearm-related, unless they're anchored with a spear gun or something.

Since we're on the topic, my take on vampires (The Vampires of Michigan, visit www.ahlloyd.com to buy your copy today!) is that they regenerate very fast, don't like sunlight, but sufficient trauma (like blowing them up) does the trick. Severed body parts stay severed, and while the vampire code prohibits unlawful execution, cutting ears/fingers off is something of a gray area.

And it leaves a very lasting reminder.

Lots of guns in that book, btw. One of the protagonists uses a Manurhin revolver to deadly effect.

Speaking of Manurhin, anyone own any? In addition to the iconic revolvers, for a time they made Walther PPs. Some say the quality was better than the ones made in Germany because Walther's QC people were total pricks, looking for any excuse to fail one.

I've got a manurhin 88 in 357, it's a great looking pistol that I got second hand from armurerie de la bourse, but it's a bitch to take aim with and I can't seem to lower my aim. Otherwise it's a fun gun.

I know a guy in my shooting range who owns a defect manurhin 73, because it's got only 5 cartridges, the last emplacement is broken. However, the gun itself is incredibly comfortable, notably by 357 metrics, great accuracy and a real charm to look at.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:Speaking of Manurhin, anyone own any? In addition to the iconic revolvers, for a time they made Walther PPs. Some say the quality was better than the ones made in Germany because Walther's QC people were total pricks, looking for any excuse to fail one.

My wife has a Manurhin P1.



There's a bit of interesting history behind the Manurhin manufacture of Walther firearms; this one has the flower marking on the trigger guard indicating acceptance by the West Berlin police. It's a really nice handgun, just a bit archaic in using single-stack mags, and the frames are known to crack if shot extensively on 9x19mm NATO or commercial +P ammo.

I almost bought one a while ago. After the second world war manurhin started making copies of P38, PP/PPK and long barrelled short version in both 7,65 and 22lr.

Another gun I almost bought but finally prefered sto skip if favor of a Saiga MK103 because spare parts are difficult to get is a Sig Manurhin. When the french army first intervened in Libanon, their MAT49, MAS and other stuff were all outgunned by the AKM. In a rush, before the FAMAS program actually gave results, it was decided to strike some sort of agreements with SIG to produce their guns under license.

They were first and formost handed over to paratroopers.

Civilian versions in 222 or 243 were also made, seperated from military 223. The one I almost bought was in 222 with bipods but no optic ready mount.

Sadly, manurhin was sold to saudis a while ago, and the production of mr73 is now carried out by italian (I think?) firm Chapuis guns.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I almost bought one a while ago. After the second world war manurhin started making copies of P38, PP/PPK and long barrelled short version in both 7,65 and 22lr.

Germany was occupied and its armaments industries shut down. Manurhin took over Walther's contracts and produced licensed copies of their work. The P1 was a product-improved P38 for the Bundeswehr. As I said above, the story is that Walther's people were severely pissed about all this, so they nit-picked the quality control, which had the unintended result of ensuring that Manurhin weapons are actually of superior quality to the subsequent German-made versions.

Sadly, manurhin was sold to saudis a while ago, and the production of mr73 is now carried out by italian (I think?) firm Chapuis guns.

Italy has some excellent firearms manufacturers, so that's not necessarily a bad thing.

One thing I do lament is the collapse of national firearms manufacturing. Everyone got onto the band wagon that "just-in-time delivery" was the way to go and the lowest bidder should win, and now a bunch of excellent companies are gone.

Spain used to make very cool, affordable firearms.

Contrast that with the UK, whose domestic firearms production peaked in 1913. I think they were the only country that was still relying on revolvers in WW II. Even China knew that auto-loaders were the way to go, and I think it's funny that the Brits ended up adopting the Hi Power because the SOE types saw the Inglis and demanded a few of their own.

It's not so much that Italy is bad at doing guns, heck not at all, but more that as a french, I'm sad that such symbol of a gun as the mr73 is no longer actually french.

I've never seen a Chapuis made 73 so I can't tell.

France has always had a very decent weapon and cartridges industry, until they decided to stop it which has had catastrophic consequences for the economy, participating heavily in destroying french industry, and the army, which is now in perpetual trouble when trying to get a decent weapon at an affordable cost because poor.

The FAMAS is really just a great gun, the optical mount version is proprietary so it's a bit tedious to get optics on it, but boy that's a great gun: well balanced, short, light, precise, controls are confortable... Only downside is that the trigger is a bit heavy, since it's bullpup, but that remains totally valid once used to.

I wish I could find a civilian FAMAS to buy but those where almost all handed over to you in the US, you lucky Yankees .

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
It's not so much that Italy is bad at doing guns, heck not at all, but more that as a french, I'm sad that such symbol of a gun as the mr73 is no longer actually french.

I hear ya. French arms are pretty rare here in the States, and ammo is hard to come by. I think that most of what we have actually was sent as aid to the Spanish Second Republic, was captured by Franco, and sold to Interarms in the late 50s. Maybe some came back with GIs, but I think they were too busy lugging Lugers and Mausers to bother with Lebels.

(My great-grandfather was part of the AEF in 1918, fought in the Argonne and was subsequently part of the Army of Occupation. He came back with two duffel bags stuffed with, er, things he found, but they disappeared before he died.)

I wish I could find a civilian FAMAS to buy but those where almost all handed over to you in the US, you lucky Yankees .

The combination of our armies being staffed by kleptomaniacs and our population insatiably hungry for things that go BOOM, is why we've got a lot of gun stuff.

Not only that, there's a significant industry to support those old weapons, as in new-manufacture replacement parts. Last time I checked, there are actual Mosin and Mauser replacement barrels being made.

Heck, replacement barrels for mosin? I could use one someday if postage is not to high!

In France there's a strange paradox. Most of the population actually likes guns, mostly for hunting granted, and we were one of the most armed countries a while ago still, 7th or so. We had an army with not too much means altogether but ambitions to keep in the race nonetheless so we needed weapons.

But somehow a "guns are bad" rethoric as gained momentum in the same time a "industry is not needed we can by on shelf for a discount" rethoric.

So we're a country that likes guns, but each time there was an terrorist attack we legal shooters were getting our boomsticks banned, we have no more weapon production, and if ever you are made to stand up to your life with one of your gun you will go to jail... Go figure.

Respect to your grandpa btw

Going by footage of the latest... street festivities... you've had over there, seems like there is a lot of "shall not comply" on that front in France.

Wish we could so casually get M249s and M60s over here.

Oh yes there totally is, but thing is, it's not the same population that owns the most.

Legally detained weapons are more or less stagnant, little up but in no significant numbers because people don't know the rules to get one and get turned down at gunshops, and because they know they'll be stuffed if they ever actually need to defend themselves with them so they don't necesseraly dare to actually get one.

But, in the meantime, suburbs full of dealers being out of the reach of the police, well, they've got what they want. Rumor has it that in cities like mine, Saint Dizier, they already came across RPGs and grenades.

So, when those people go on riot, well, they may kit out with whatever drug money and state allocated financial care may buy them.

At the other end of the spectre, we have some ultra right wings elements that also manage to get heavy equipment and often know how to use them. Funnily enough, places where they set up (like it happened in Lyon i believe) tend to be spared the holy crusade of the rioters... Again, go figure.

But you and you double barrelled 1890 hunting gun are treated like you're the terrorist. Brainrot is real in this country lol!

But I'm getting political and that's not within the forum's rules, please forgive me for spitting out frustration on here

 Grey Templar wrote:
Going by footage of the latest... street festivities... you've had over there, seems like there is a lot of "shall not comply" on that front in France.

Wish we could so casually get M249s and M60s over here.

Oh, what I wouldn't give to be able to legally have an M60...

You would need some sort of screen showing your bank balance going down as each belt went through it

Oh, it'd be expensive to shoot, but glorious when events put me in the position where firing it would be necessary. It was my service weapon for 6 years in the Army.

 Slinky wrote:
You would need some sort of screen showing your bank balance going down as each belt went through it

It would be like watching the ammo count on the set guns for the full cut of Aliens.

"Two hundred. Two-fifty. Three hundred. Three-fifty..."

"Is that rounds expended?"

"No, dollars."

Full-auto weapons are legal in the US, but they require extra hoops to jump through and the "entry level" weapons are equivalent to purchasing an car. The "collector" items range from a vacation cabin to a second home.

Honestly, having fired full-auto stuff in the military, it's fun, but only if someone else is paying for the ammo.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Slinky wrote:
You would need some sort of screen showing your bank balance going down as each belt went through it

Full-auto weapons are legal in the US, but they require extra hoops to jump through and the "entry level" weapons are equivalent to purchasing an car. The "collector" items range from a vacation cabin to a second home.

Honestly, having fired full-auto stuff in the military, it's fun, but only if someone else is paying for the ammo.

That's precisely that, you do it 2 3 times, for the giggles, but that's all. Even if automatic guns were legal in france I wouldn't use one because rounds are that expensive

Just so you know, famas don't really like full auto and tend to get blue after 3-4 magazines still working fine though

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Slinky wrote:
You would need some sort of screen showing your bank balance going down as each belt went through it

Full-auto weapons are legal in the US, but they require extra hoops to jump through and the "entry level" weapons are equivalent to purchasing an car. The "collector" items range from a vacation cabin to a second home.

Honestly, having fired full-auto stuff in the military, it's fun, but only if someone else is paying for the ammo.

That's precisely that, you do it 2 3 times, for the giggles, but that's all. Even if automatic guns were legal in france I wouldn't use one because rounds are that expensive

Just so you know, famas don't really like full auto and tend to get blue after 3-4 magazines still working fine though

I'd rather get my hands on a fully auto FN FAL than a FAMAS, but that's just me...

 Just Tony wrote:
I'd rather get my hands on a fully auto FN FAL than a FAMAS, but that's just me...

If you're going to fire full-auto, then a big part of the satisfaction comes from the effect on the target. Spending that kind of money to make holes in paper just doesn't cut it.

Indeed, while I use paper targets for practice, I also like destructible objects as well. For example, when our dishes were getting old and cracked, we returned them to the earth via kinetic action. Refilling juice or milk jugs with water is also an inexpensive way of getting a feel for some dakka.

So if I get behind something full-auto, I want to cut a car in half with it or something.

And 5.56 isn't really going to do that.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I'd rather get my hands on a fully auto FN FAL than a FAMAS, but that's just me...

If you're going to fire full-auto, then a big part of the satisfaction comes from the effect on the target. Spending that kind of money to make holes in paper just doesn't cut it.

Indeed, while I use paper targets for practice, I also like destructible objects as well. For example, when our dishes were getting old and cracked, we returned them to the earth via kinetic action. Refilling juice or milk jugs with water is also an inexpensive way of getting a feel for some dakka.

So if I get behind something full-auto, I want to cut a car in half with it or something.

And 5.56 isn't really going to do that.

FN FAL is 7.62

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I'd rather get my hands on a fully auto FN FAL than a FAMAS, but that's just me...

If you're going to fire full-auto, then a big part of the satisfaction comes from the effect on the target. Spending that kind of money to make holes in paper just doesn't cut it.

Indeed, while I use paper targets for practice, I also like destructible objects as well. For example, when our dishes were getting old and cracked, we returned them to the earth via kinetic action. Refilling juice or milk jugs with water is also an inexpensive way of getting a feel for some dakka.

So if I get behind something full-auto, I want to cut a car in half with it or something.

And 5.56 isn't really going to do that.

That's really a matter of taste but what I like is the sound and kick (well, recoil is actually a bit lesser, but i think you get my drift). I could litteraly spread ammo in the air on full auto and call it a day Not sure my wallet would survive that though.

When I want to have a blast (frenchman tries a pun) with any destructible target, from now on, I'll be able to get my auto 5 to work on it. Just tested it an hour ago just in case, chewed through low end decathlon ammo no problem. I took care to apply a thin veil of grease on the barrel spring though.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:


If you're going to fire full-auto, then a big part of the satisfaction comes from the effect on the target. Spending that kind of money to make holes in paper just doesn't cut it.

Indeed, while I use paper targets for practice, I also like destructible objects as well. For example, when our dishes were getting old and cracked, we returned them to the earth via kinetic action. Refilling juice or milk jugs with water is also an inexpensive way of getting a feel for some dakka.

On the subject of destructible targets. I blew out some eggs a while back and let the shells dry for a few days then filled those with wood ash. Fun little targets to pop. And they don't really hurt anything so I don't have to clean them up.
The eggs, just peck a hole in the top and bottom with a knife or what not and blow the eggs out into a bowl. add cream and scramble those in a pan add cheese or what ever and enjoy. at least three eggs for an omelet.


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Oh, and a small update on the pistol vs dogs post I made several months ago, maybe last year. I'm still shooting the GSG 1911. It's really fun and seems accurate. Just got in 4 -16 Round 1911 22LR High Capacity Magazine - conversion kits. from Taylor Tactical. I ordered them with their better spring they offer. They just arrived and were very easy to install. No problems. They only hold 15 rounds not the 16 advertised but that could be either because of the better spring or because they are brand new. I'm not upset at all. I'd only just seen a few bad reviews but they were older reviews by a few years. These mags worked really well no real problems just one small issue with one mag where it wanted to double feed and I dropped a round but no other problems and no cycling issues. I'm shooting 22 Thunderbolt and it's been reliable. Cycling issues was where they failed in the review I mention.
I'm looking at buying a GSG 922 for concealed carry as it seems really close to the 1911 platform in function but I have to get hands on one first to decide. The mags work in both pistols which is one reason I'm giving it thought.
More rounds makes all the difference! So far so good. I am planning to buy more mags and more conversion kits. One or two more anyway.

let us know when you get that them

 Just Tony wrote:
FN FAL is 7.62

I'm aware of that, I was referring to the FAMAS or other 5.56mm weapons.

As a weapon I have to carry on road marches and pack ammo for, 5.56 is the winner, but if I'm dusting stuff at a range, I absolutely need more dakka.


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 warhead01 wrote:
I'm looking at buying a GSG 922 for concealed carry as it seems really close to the 1911 platform in function but I have to get hands on one first to decide. The mags work in both pistols which is one reason I'm giving it thought.
More rounds makes all the difference! So far so good. I am planning to buy more mags and more conversion kits. One or two more anyway.

Somebody should make a full-sized high-cap in .32 ACP. It would be soft as a pussycat and yet pack much more horsepower than a .22LR. Also, centerfire to inherently more reliable. Years of shooting .22LR have convinced me it a plinking round, not a self-defense one. It costs more, but .25 ACP has the exact same performance and it's centerfire.

It is surprising that nobody has made a SMG in a small caliber like .25 or .32 caliber with absurd magazine capacity. Something like the American 180 but a little more punch.

Or to fix the unreliability of .22 you make a man-portable chain-gun with a backpack ammo supply.

True that 22 tends to jam or misfire regularly...as for power, I think garand thumb made a video about it somewhere in the past but I didn't take the time to watch it.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It is surprising that nobody has made a SMG in a small caliber like .25 or .32 caliber with absurd magazine capacity. Something like the American 180 but a little more punch.

Or to fix the unreliability of .22 you make a man-portable chain-gun with a backpack ammo supply.

There are Gatling guns in .22LR, and of course since they operate from a crank, they aren't considered Class III.

There were SMGs in .32 ACP back in the day, but they lacked battlefield range. The trend was for higher velocity/hitting power.

The fact is .22LR is in something of a sour spot since rimfire is inherently less reliable and the rim itself makes it harder to cycle.

The big thing it has going for it is that it is exponentially cheaper than .25 ACP, and one of the weirdest things about ammo prices is how completely divorced they are from materials. A 240-grain .44 magnum cartridge costs less than 85 grain .32 H&R Magnum.

Totally crazy.

How much do ammunition cost on average in the US? For the most common calibers at least?

Here it's steadily increasing, even surplus ammunition is scratching 80 cents for some calibers like 5,56, 7,62x39 is around 40 cents...

I've seen 22 jump from 5 euros for 50 bullets to 6 or even 7, not even talking about minimags, just standards all around loads.

Hopefully I relaod my 7,62x54 myself at least! But even then relaoding is getting harder because not only do powder etc get expensive, but it's actually hard to find a store that sells them.

You see, a law was passed a few years ago, whereby storage of powder was more strictly regulated, so most little gunsmith can't actually store it anymore...

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
How much do ammunition cost on average in the US? For the most common calibers at least?

Right now it's in flux. The Covid spike sent everything to unimaginable levels, even assuming you could get it.

We're now seeing something of a correction and calibers like 9mm are close if not at pre-pandemic levels. Same with 5.56mm. There's a theory that this partly a result of profit-taking/over-production (9mm was at $1 a round at its peak, so why not shift all production to something that is 5x its normal price?) but because the US is no longer engaged in active conflicts, military caliber ammunition is now just sitting there, and contractors are dumping the surplus on the open market.

Something I learned about ammo manufacture is that the big companies will do a major run of something and then switch that line to something else. For example, the market in .303 British isn't huge, but rather than keep that line open but at 1/10 capacity, you use it at full strength to make what is in essence a two-year supply based on market data. All the wholesalers will buy it up, and put some in warehouses because it will eventually sell. Now you can do 7x57mm Mauser, etc.

With the pandemic, everything sold out. The major factories focused on high-volume calibers because they were making money hand over fist. Those inventories are now huge, hence the discounts. Indeed, some manufacturers are offering rebates to move inventory.

And so the niche calibers are coming back. They are higher than they were before, but part of that is inflation. Yet even for those calibers there is downward pressure because people bought all they could, and now have pretty big stockpiles. So if you panic-bought 500 rounds of .303 British, it coming back on the market means nothing to you.

https://ammoseek.com/ is pretty much the go-site for spot checks on prices.

Around here 5.56 is usually around 30-40 cents a round. 7.62x39 is usually the same, but since the Russian import bans it has spiked a bit though you can still get it at normal prices if you look around.

50 round boxes of 5.7mm for my P90 is $46 plus tax

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
How much do ammunition cost on average in the US? For the most common calibers at least?

Right now it's in flux. The Covid spike sent everything to unimaginable levels, even assuming you could get it.

We're now seeing something of a correction and calibers like 9mm are close if not at pre-pandemic levels. Same with 5.56mm. There's a theory that this partly a result of profit-taking/over-production (9mm was at $1 a round at its peak, so why not shift all production to something that is 5x its normal price?) but because the US is no longer engaged in active conflicts, military caliber ammunition is now just sitting there, and contractors are dumping the surplus on the open market.

Something I learned about ammo manufacture is that the big companies will do a major run of something and then switch that line to something else. For example, the market in .303 British isn't huge, but rather than keep that line open but at 1/10 capacity, you use it at full strength to make what is in essence a two-year supply based on market data. All the wholesalers will buy it up, and put some in warehouses because it will eventually sell. Now you can do 7x57mm Mauser, etc.

With the pandemic, everything sold out. The major factories focused on high-volume calibers because they were making money hand over fist. Those inventories are now huge, hence the discounts. Indeed, some manufacturers are offering rebates to move inventory.

And so the niche calibers are coming back. They are higher than they were before, but part of that is inflation. Yet even for those calibers there is downward pressure because people bought all they could, and now have pretty big stockpiles. So if you panic-bought 500 rounds of .303 British, it coming back on the market means nothing to you.

https://ammoseek.com/ is pretty much the go-site for spot checks on prices.

I didn't know that about ammo factories, thanks for telling me!

5,7mm is 1 euro per round here. Apart from a few rare five sevens pistols, E have no P90 out there because, like posh submachine guns for instance, it is considered too short and this must use an ugly extended barrel. Plus it can't be full auto which is way too sad for such weapons

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I wish I could find a civilian FAMAS to buy but those where almost all handed over to you in the US, you lucky Yankees .

Well I bet a lot of people are crossing fingers hoping that the stock that is left after the replacement is mostly done is shipped to Ukraine. Plenty of firearms leak from there, and post war they are going to want to standardise so all these other types will be disposed of. Assuming some oligarch doesn't mess it all up there could be some excellent auctions/bulk lots being shipped to other countries.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Around here 5.56 is usually around 30-40 cents a round. 7.62x39 is usually the same, but since the Russian import bans it has spiked a bit though you can still get it at normal prices if you look around.

50 round boxes of 5.7mm for my P90 is $46 plus tax

Would love to know what is the actual cost of ammo production, then retooling for a different calibre/propellant, and overall overhead of a small factory. I am sure such numbers must be increasingly easy to find with all of the expansion to meet demand in Ukraine and elsewhere.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Would love to know what is the actual cost of ammo production, then retooling for a different calibre/propellant, and overall overhead of a small factory. I am sure such numbers must be increasingly easy to find with all of the expansion to meet demand in Ukraine and elsewhere.

I think with most calibers, production costs are only one element in determining price. A bigger piece is the demand and amount of competing producers.

For example, making 8x22 Nambu ammo is not materially more complex or expensive than making 7.63mm Mauser. If anything, it should be cheaper based on the amount of materials used.

However, only a few producers bother to make it, and so they can charge through the nose. Want to put a magazine through Granpa's bringback Type 14? That'll cost $20, assuming you can find it.

Again, the pandemic swept out all inventory, so ammo that had sat on the shelves at reasonable prices only because demand was low - that's all gone. This means the market is starting from scratch, so ammo that was .50 per round in 2019 can be $1.50 simply because it's just hard to find.

As for Ukraine surplus, I don't think any of that will get back here. If we had pre-1968 import rules, yes, but now, it's too difficult. The best one will see is "parts kits" mated with American trigger assemblies.

 Grey Templar wrote:
50 round boxes of 5.7mm for my P90 is $46 plus tax

This saddens me, I really want the new M&P in 5.7, but can't justify the price of ammo.

We can hope the NFA goes away in the next few years and we can get some of that sweet un-modified surplus

So, when laws change and say, certain magazine capacities or rates of fire aren’t allow, what happens to owned guns which could no longer be legally bought or sold?

In France, you ought to know it ("nobody should be ignorant of the law") and give them over to the gendarmerie or police.

However, mostly in villages, many people are not informed. It leads to a great deal of weapons and accessories, mostly for hunting being now detained illegaly and unregistered. Effectively, many now Category C rifles were available at supermarkets in hunting shelves, or were formerly S category (free detention and buy) but were overranked (surclassé) in C and thus came under mandatory declaration.

If you are found in possession of such weapons, you face prison and/or strong financial punishments and registration in the FINIADA (Fichier National des Interdits d'Achat et deDétention d'Armes), forbidding you any further buying or detention for 5 years.

A year or so ago, inspiration was taken from operation "rendez les armes" (throw your weapons) that is regularly conducted in french islands, and the same operation was made in metropolitan police offices. The idea is that you can exceptionally come by and hand over any weapon, piece of weapon, or ammunition illegaly detained for destruction or selling at auction at the benefice of the government. It was a relative success, as it is supposed that while hunters and shooters mostly didn't attend, the average people who don't own shooting or hunting licenses or are poorly informed about gun laws and were at loss what to do with these often inherited weapons showed en masse.


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Finally, rights are a bit different between people and ranges. This mostly deals with overranked former auto rifles converted to semi auto. After the Bataclan attacks, these rifles became forbidden to sell, but the current owner could keep it. The law changed again around late 2022 and it became illegal to have one. However, shooting ranges were in the end allowed to keep them nonetheless, which led some collectors or gun enthusiasts embarrassed with such weapons to cede them to their local shooting range. It can be changed at any time though, so ranges are not too keen on buying them and rather get them free from former owners.


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Ho, and by the way, broadly summarised, semi auto guns are category B, and category A is "war equipment and weapons", mostly full auto guns and military equipments such as some gas masks, explosives, etc...


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Hope you find this horrid wall of text informative

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So, when laws change and say, certain magazine capacities or rates of fire aren’t allow, what happens to owned guns which could no longer be legally bought or sold?

Eventually they will wear out. You'll run out of parts to do repairs. What parts that wear out and which is controlled all make different problems. Where I live barrels are controlled items, so if you wear a barrel out you're SOL unless you can source a new one, which requires a whole government approval process. If you can't get around that, you have scrap.

Some guns will wear out and aren't user replaceable. Some, like the AR, are super modular. You can't easily replace the barrel or lower on an AK, but an AR? You can easily switch and swap parts. You can cannibalize other guns to keep one running

In the US they are usually grandfathered.

The remaining civilian transferable automatic weapons have been grandfathered in since 1986. The one and only transferable M249 SAW is currently on auction and the top bid is $310,000.

During the "Assault Weapons Ban" newly manufactured magazines were limited to 10 rounds and again all existing mags were grandfathered in. The effect was that new types of guns only had 10 round magazines available, and older style guns would come with 10 round mags when you bought them. You could then buy pre ban mags for them at inflated prices. The level of inflation depended on supply. The supply of combat rifle magazines was essentially unlimited and these would only be double or triple price. Pistol mags were between outrageous to exorbitant depending on the gun.

That said, like a lot of these questions the answers vary heavily depending on where you are at, and the newer laws in places like NY and CA may not have those same provisions. You should check your country, state, and local laws yourself (don't just ask internet strangers) before making any firearms related purchases.

--------------

Regarding ammo prices in the US, online it seems the prices are similar to France, and availability is the best its been in years.

Locally the prices haven't caught up. For example M193 is still .80 cpr at all three of my usual gun stores and half that online. I guess they will have to try to sell what they can at those prices then be forced to take a loss.

As for the really good stuff, the prices have come down a lot on the pistol ammo but for rifles not so much. Any 77 grain 5.56, .308 or US made (brass) 7.62x39 are $1 per round or more.

As they say, buy it cheap and stack it deep. I don't think the prices will come down much more for most calibers.

-----------

Regarding the FAMAS I have no experience with it, but as I understand they are replacing it with the HK 416, which is very highly regarded here in the US. I'd think most armies (including the US) would be very happy with that as their standard issue rifle.

I shot the HK416 we have a couple of times, it is precise, but handling is cancerous due to poor weight repartition and it breaks continuously. Charging handles get stuck, barrels split, buttons fly... A bit of sand or mud kills it, double feed is almost unmanageable without a knife or tool to extract cartridges, and magazines do not attach correctly half the time.


Maybe it's just our version, but heck it is an absolute catastrophe.

 Slowroll wrote:
In the US they are usually grandfathered.

If the pistol brace ban or the bump stock ban are any indication of how the current ATF works, nothing will be grandfathered. You'll have to destroy the newly illegal firearm, turn it in to your local LEOs, or maybe pay to register it and get a tax stamp (which also makes it difficult to ever legally transfer, and difficult to legally cross state lines with). Otherwise you'll risk federal weapons charges and lose your right to ever own a weapon again.

EDIT: You can also risk holding out and hoping the courts tell the ATF to pound sand, but again, that is a risk.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I shot the HK416 we have a couple of times, it is precise, but handling is cancerous due to poor weight repartition and it breaks continuously. Charging handles get stuck, barrels split, buttons fly... A bit of sand or mud kills it, double feed is almost unmanageable without a knife or tool to extract cartridges, and magazines do not attach correctly half the time.

Maybe it's just our version, but heck it is an absolute catastrophe.

Sounds like terrible quality control, because the core platform is solid and HK is known for quality work.

As for the US regulatory environment, while I don't want to get embroiled in a (forbidden) political discussion, it is important to understand the difference in American law between actual laws (that is, passed by elected legislatures and signed by an elected executive) and regulatory law, which is promulgated by agencies on relying on delegated powers.

The latter are much more easily disposed of in court challenges.

I will also refer people to the thread in this forum on American political jurisdictions, because the federal government has limited direct authority in peoples' everyday lives. Marijuana is still illegal under federal law but many states (including the one in which I reside) have legalized it, and it is sold openly in brick-and-mortar shops without any federal interference.

Interesting. France is managed differently as it is a centralised state with little to no variation on gun laws across the country, if anything they would be temporary limitations, bans of transportation, or longer wait to be granted category B authorisation (see above).

Rumour has it that it is not so much quality control than buying a cheap version with low quality materials. I can't say, but I can assure you the gun sucks. Which surprised me a lot because I also read outstanding feedback about it.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I shot the HK416 we have a couple of times, it is precise, but handling is cancerous due to poor weight repartition and it breaks continuously. Charging handles get stuck, barrels split, buttons fly... A bit of sand or mud kills it, double feed is almost unmanageable without a knife or tool to extract cartridges, and magazines do not attach correctly half the time.


Maybe it's just our version, but heck it is an absolute catastrophe.

Before the Great Boating Accident I had the civilian version and never had any issues. PMAGS and HK and Lancer all fit in and fed correctly, never had a charging handle issue, and probably put 1000-1200 rounds through before it got a good cleaning other than a quick bore snake and spraying bolt with CLP. Piston guns tend to be heavier than their DI counterparts, but the weight on mine seems balanced. Honestly, loved it.

Seems to confirm we probably just bought low end batches then. Spare parts are also tedious to get because deliveries are not always on time so restock is often delayed.

HK stock of parts is crap, unless you're ordering through a USASOC unit. At least HK USA (HK in Germany might be different) never has a lot of spare parts in stock.

I didn't know that, thanks for pointing out. Thought it was an isolated issue

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Interesting. France is managed differently as it is a centralised state with little to no variation on gun laws across the country, if anything they would be temporary limitations, bans of transportation, or longer wait to be granted category B authorisation (see above).

Just to give an example, there are states where no permit is necessary to carry a concealed firearm on your person, and if the firearm is purchased from a private citizen, there is no record of its transfer. Other states allow carry, but have a training and registration requirement. Until recently, some states prohibited concealed carry altogether, but that was recently ruled illegal (or, in American vernacular, "unconstitutional," which is the ultimate form of illegality).

Rumour has it that it is not so much quality control than buying a cheap version with low quality materials. I can't say, but I can assure you the gun sucks. Which surprised me a lot because I also read outstanding feedback about it.

Are you talking about weapon parts not made by HK but in accord with HK's design? We have tons of AR-15 manufacturers, and some are less than stellar.

I get your explanation. There exists an association in France known as ARPAC (association for the re-establishment of citizen gun carry) which demands the return of that long gone right under conditions of training and registration, to allow conceal carry for a number of citizen, so that in any case of aggression, there would be a reasonable chance that an armed citizen would be able to intervene. This is kind of going nowhere at the moment but it exists nonetheless.

As for HK part I don't now who actually produces what, apart from gun barrels that are made in France somewhere but due to cost restrictions are low end endurance wise. I'd say the rest must be German but I've not checked.

I think a lot of high-end manufacturers neglect to maintain a ready supply of parts for people to buy in-case of needing replacements. There isn't much money in it and the stock can languish. A specific part might go years before being bought. Compared to making a whole gun which is a little easier to find a buyer for.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I shot the HK416 we have a couple of times, it is precise, but handling is cancerous due to poor weight repartition and it breaks continuously. Charging handles get stuck, barrels split, buttons fly... A bit of sand or mud kills it, double feed is almost unmanageable without a knife or tool to extract cartridges, and magazines do not attach correctly half the time.


Maybe it's just our version, but heck it is an absolute catastrophe.

That is fascinating - does that mean that some units are resisting being re-equipped until the problems are sorted? Presumably if they are still using that lighter round stocks will run dry at some point. But assuming there are a bunch left maybe Ukraine can get some mileage with the rifle grenades

Are the Navy keeping their variant until last perhaps?

Yes, some units avoided supply of HK416 until the very last moment. Indeed, many people prefer the FAMAS still. Some were re equipped temporally with FAMAS to send back defect HK batches too. Witnessed it once myself.

I don't really know about the navy, as far as I now replacements are also very slow outside of SF but I can't confirm that.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Yes, some units avoided supply of HK416 until the very last moment. Indeed, many people prefer the FAMAS still. Some were re equipped temporally with FAMAS to send back defect HK batches too. Witnessed it once myself.

I don't really know about the navy, as far as I now replacements are also very slow outside of SF but I can't confirm that.

So are your 416s made in France? Could it be a subcontractor issue with quality control?

Because from my experience, HK products are absolutely brilliant. Firing an HK handgun has been compared to holding it while a team of Germans in lab coats calculate what the gun must achieve and then alter the design on the fly. And then you pull the exquisite trigger and hit the center of the target.

I don't know what the secret sauce is, but HKs are a delight to shoot and absolutely increase my accuracy.

The problem is that they are at a very high price point vs other options.

That is probably the issue. The local manufacturer is not matching the HK standards. I know France is very... zealous about their self-sufficiency in national defense so they almost certainly are making them locally. Not a bad thing necessarily, but if the firm is doing a shoddy job then its probably not a good idea. Which is odd, French industry is obviously not Teutonic levels of precision, but it should be more than capable of making a high quality AR clone.

Only gun barrels are made in France, their definitely was a subcontractor issue with them due too them using pig iron to cut prices - they should never break line they do.

All of the reste is apparentlyade in Germany, but since we pushed very hard to get cheap guns, since we can't afford otherwise, they might have replace good components with low end ones, like they did to some batches of Bundeswehr G36 that distorted under heat.

Although in that case, we know some batches we defect, but James Reeves tested one and had no problem, so it's not ALL of them.

Options... We had two main others. A Croation bullpup colloquially know "FAMAS 2", the VHS 2, or an AR15 copy proposed by french manufacturer Verney Carron, called VCD15.

I think it's a great shame they didn't go for the French one: replacement parts would be easier to demand, quality control easier to enforce, there would have been some cashback through developping the last french small arm factory.

Official argument to turn this gun own was that the output would be too small (which is silly considering not all Regiments got their HK by now, program started in 2015), and that they couldn't do to large a bargain on the guns and were far above the 1200 euro mark.

Civilian VCD15 are out there but I never saw any, they are a bit too expensive as they are not many of them but apparently they're pretty unremarkable: good gun in any regards, but not outstanding.

Nice try ATF. Honestly though… All my guns were lost in a boating accident. It was tragic. Now I don’t have any guns.

That's really sad

It doesn't even have to be poor quality overall, it could be that the materials are fine, but the tolerances are off. That would also cause overpressure and malfunctions with other parts that simply can't function out of tolerance.

A lot of Western military procurement seems to operate on the basis that war is impossible, and the most important thing is giving the generals or ministers cushy jobs once they leave office. The way in which government arsenals were completely dismantled and replaced with indifferent private contractors who have zero surge capacity would be inconceivable at any other time.

Agree with you but please no politics illa get censored

Talked with the guys in the armoury about it a couple of times, for one reason or another the inner parts seem to be the problem, as to know whether it's bad tolerances or bad materials they couldn't say. However the instance of guns being shipped back to HK were defectious parts that broke the gas piston system, so they pretty much became bolt action HK416, and in that case that's bad tolerances no questions asked: a ring in front of the piston was too loose and would put itself in a malfunctioning position

If it was bad materials I would expect the guns to work fine at first but parts to begin breaking after a while. If they're having mechanical malfunctions consistently even when brand new, I would expect it to be tolerance issues.

Now that you said it, that makes sense. That must be that

Although wear and tear is also way too high in general, mostly for the barrel and ergonomics (button, sling attaches...) so it has got to be a mixed bag of those two

Apparently, I asked, and the guns were indeed bought at 1200 euros all included each, which kind of sounds cheap to me but prices are high in France in generals so I don't know what it's worth

Well, the US pays about $700 for M4s(not including the optics and extra bits), so $1200ish for that is extremely high. Assuming that is just for the gun itself and not including any extra bits.

I'm pretty sure this was all inclusive, though, but then I guess we got scammed of they decided that a 1200 gun was a bargain


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Edit: without optics though, those are sold separately. No idea about the price of them

Optics are expensive, or at least the good stuff is. The Aimpoint Comp M4 is a common optic used by the US and its a $1000 optic. I'm sure they get bulk deals, but its still very pricy. More than the gun its going on.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, the US pays about $700 for M4s(not including the optics and extra bits), so $1200ish for that is extremely high. Assuming that is just for the gun itself and not including any extra bits.

Yeah, but the US has also bought HK416s, and they came in between $2K - $3K per (a few different contracts for the acquisitions). Some USMC and SOCOM units got HKs.

 CptJake wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, the US pays about $700 for M4s(not including the optics and extra bits), so $1200ish for that is extremely high. Assuming that is just for the gun itself and not including any extra bits.

Yeah, but the US has also bought HK416s, and they came in between $2K - $3K per (a few different contracts for the acquisitions). Some USMC and SOCOM units got HKs.

I'm sure that was under the assumption that HK was of high quality, which in my experience they are.

Again, it may be a problem with subcontractors or poor QC. Weird that HK would tolerate it, as their brand is built upon the highest possible standards. No one is going to pay HK prices for bargain basement quality.

Then again, don't forget HK scammed the bundeswhere with batches of G36 using other material than what was advertised and causing them to bend under heat.

So I'm not so sure they'd care. Plus military markets in Europe are less if a bad buzz because you will rarely hear them complain or this won't reach that many people aside from us gun nerds.

For target shooting.

Have you ever had a gun you just couldn’t shoot accurately? A temperamental beast where no matter the adjustments made or practice, it just wouldn’t behave itself?

Yep, as I mentioned earlier about the manurhin 88 I own, it's a bitch too aim and I can't seem to have a consistent height for my impacts with it.

I've also seen a dude bring an old mosin on which the bore around the exit of the barrel was badly scared and it cause shots to fly in seemingly random fashion. He gave it a Dremel and when I see him again I ask whether he saw any improvement.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
A lot of Western military procurement seems to operate on the basis that war is impossible, and the most important thing is giving the generals or ministers cushy jobs once they leave office. The way in which government arsenals were completely dismantled and replaced with indifferent private contractors who have zero surge capacity would be inconceivable at any other time.

The UK discovered (and now is probably forgetting) just in time deliver that fails 5% of the time is actually quick tricky when fighting a war (in 2003 in Iraq).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For target shooting.

Have you ever had a gun you just couldn’t shoot accurately? A temperamental beast where no matter the adjustments made or practice, it just wouldn’t behave itself?

I had a Turkish clone of an Israeli clone of a CZ-75 that had vicious trigger slap. If you pressed the trigger from just the right point it shot fine, but if your finger was not in that perfect position, it bit you in a very weird and uncomfortable way. That one didn't drown in a canoe accident, it was sold.

The gun I bought with the proceeds is the one at the bottom of a lake.

Any thoughts on the SCCY CPX-1 or SCCy DVG 1 ?

my dad is looking at one but the reviews on them, I can't tell if they're good, ok or crap.
My Dad has a thing about always buying cheap and I think that's probably a very poor idea for a self defense pocket gun. I know he has the money for something more expensive. He just always buys cheap, it's irritating. He bought me some gloves and was excited by how cheap they were. I said I'd run through them in a month and sure enough, utter garbage.

I suspect this would continue to be true with guns. It's also put a few things into perspective for me about guns I have been looking at. I'm thinking saving up 1600 dollars is the right call and will open up some doors to a quality pistola for me. I really only want one. I could live with buying two, because I probably will, but I don't want a collection.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/11/03/sccy-cpx-1-review/


https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2020/01/24/shot-2020-sccys-new-concealed-carry-dvg-1-pistol/


Iv'e got no personnal experience with them but based on this, that doesn't sound terrible.

I'd never buy cheap for a gun I would bet my life on though. No need for a competition gun either I guess. Something reliable and ergonomic. With spare money for useful accessories.

Thank you. I'm sending every review I get ahold of to my Dad.

Dads can be real stubborn at time

The artcile explecitly says that these are guns mostly 'to carry without fearing to lose it", as in, secondary carry to bring with you on activities were you might let it fall or end up at the bottom of a lake for that matter.

Obviously I haven't got a whole lot of experience either with carry guns as it's illegal in France unfortunatly, but I bet fellow americans will answer in ampler details!

Cheap isn’t the same as value.

Have you introduced him to the Vimes “Boots” theory of economic unfairness, which also explains false economy?

I have not understood a word of what you said doc

Allow me to elucidate. Whilst in its full form this is a socio-economic critique, it also works to demonstrate False Economy - that is buying something because it’s cheap, without worrying about its relative quality.

His Grace, The Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel “Sam” Vimes wrote: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

In short, Warhead’s Dad is arguably cheating himself out of money by just buying the cheapest available. A more mid-range might involved greater initial layout, but will lead to less expenditure overall, as they simply last longer than spending the same money on multiple cheaper versions.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Then again, don't forget HK scammed the bundeswhere with batches of G36 using other material than what was advertised and causing them to bend under heat.

So I'm not so sure they'd care. Plus military markets in Europe are less if a bad buzz because you will rarely hear them complain or this won't reach that many people aside from us gun nerds.

Well the UK is continuing to move away from the bullpup, for an M4 clone it seems.
Knight's Stoner 1 (KS-1) rifles, designated the L403A1 in UK service.

Initially for its ranger brigade (don't ask). Surprising the UK marines are getting a shorter ranged rifle while the US marines are going longer ranged!
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/90-million-contract-equips-armed-forces-with-advanced-new-rifle

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Allow me to elucidate. Whilst in its full form this is a socio-economic critique, it also works to demonstrate False Economy - that is buying something because it’s cheap, without worrying about its relative quality.

His Grace, The Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel “Sam” Vimes wrote: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

In short, Warhead’s Dad is arguably cheating himself out of money by just buying the cheapest available. A more mid-range might involved greater initial layout, but will lead to less expenditure overall, as they simply last longer than spending the same money on multiple cheaper versions.

Thing is he has a habit of buying something and turning it into a project. But he also likes to brag on how much he saved. I just don't think that work with a low cost firearm. He has the means to buy basically anything he wants to. This would be a silly impulse buy for him and ultimately pointless. Or he was just showing this one to me because I am on a budget and wanted to get one too. I really can't tell yet. My first thoughts on that pistol were it would be a good throw away gun or a plant but I can't see buying it.
Another reason open carry would just make make my life easier. I would have to see a lot of good reviews myself to consider it but my first batch of reviews were troubleshooting problems which is a red flag. As to your favorite quote, I spent about 200 dollars on my last pare of boots and they were wonderful right out of the box but will have to be replace sooner rather than later because production quality isn't what it was 20 years ago. I love my McRae's but for that price I will shop with someone else.
I guess price isn't always quality.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Allow me to elucidate. Whilst in its full form this is a socio-economic critique, it also works to demonstrate False Economy - that is buying something because it’s cheap, without worrying about its relative quality.

His Grace, The Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel “Sam” Vimes wrote: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

In short, Warhead’s Dad is arguably cheating himself out of money by just buying the cheapest available. A more mid-range might involved greater initial layout, but will lead to less expenditure overall, as they simply last longer than spending the same money on multiple cheaper versions.

Oh that's in fact fairly simple


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Then again, don't forget HK scammed the bundeswhere with batches of G36 using other material than what was advertised and causing them to bend under heat.

So I'm not so sure they'd care. Plus military markets in Europe are less if a bad buzz because you will rarely hear them complain or this won't reach that many people aside from us gun nerds.

Well the UK is continuing to move away from the bullpup, for an M4 clone it seems.
Knight's Stoner 1 (KS-1) rifles, designated the L403A1 in UK service.

Initially for its ranger brigade (don't ask). Surprising the UK marines are getting a shorter ranged rifle while the US marines are going longer ranged!
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/90-million-contract-equips-armed-forces-with-advanced-new-rifle

Looks, unremarkable, from afar, but I mean, it's sound to update your gear every know and then. You just need to make contracts for good guns... I'm quit fond of the idea that the gun should be as stealthy as possible.

well, I did it. Went to a local gun shop today and bought a pistol. It's on order so I should be able to get it in hand about Wednesday next week.
I don't have my CCP so there's a small wait which is fine. I guess that's one advantage to having the CCP. I should probably do that.

It was an interest experience. I told them I wanted to be a first time gun buyer. It was never not going to happen. The guy found the pistol and put it on order while I filled out the paperwork and paid. I didn't know what to expect. This was smooth. I bought the GSG 922 pistol I have mentioned. I like the platform and it was something I could afford. I'd only expected to go in and ask dumb noob questions. silly me. The do have a 1911 DS PRODIG AOS 9MM in the case. Drool.
I really want to hold one and see if it's a good fit for me. I'll be saving up.

Here's a link to the Springfield Prodigy
.
https://www.springfield-armory.com/1911-ds-series-handguns/1911-ds-prodigy-handguns/1911-ds-prodigy-aos-9mm-handgun/

 warhead01 wrote:
Any thoughts on the SCCY CPX-1 or SCCy DVG 1 ?

my dad is looking at one but the reviews on them, I can't tell if they're good, ok or crap.
My Dad has a thing about always buying cheap and I think that's probably a very poor idea for a self defense pocket gun. I know he has the money for something more expensive. He just always buys cheap, it's irritating. He bought me some gloves and was excited by how cheap they were. I said I'd run through them in a month and sure enough, utter garbage.

I suspect this would continue to be true with guns. It's also put a few things into perspective for me about guns I have been looking at. I'm thinking saving up 1600 dollars is the right call and will open up some doors to a quality pistola for me. I really only want one. I could live with buying two, because I probably will, but I don't want a collection.

I'm a notorious cheapskate myself, so I can sympathize. The thing is, I'm not about junk, I'm about value. I will pay extra for the quality if it is actually there, but I do not believe in "buying the brand name" as some folks do.

I guess the core question is: what does the Old Man want out of a carry piece? By that I mean is he interested in features other than price?

Also: is he an experienced shooter? If so, he may well enjoy buying something cheap and tuning it into a match-grade weapon. There are people like that.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:
Any thoughts on the SCCY CPX-1 or SCCy DVG 1 ?

my dad is looking at one but the reviews on them, I can't tell if they're good, ok or crap.
My Dad has a thing about always buying cheap and I think that's probably a very poor idea for a self defense pocket gun. I know he has the money for something more expensive. He just always buys cheap, it's irritating. He bought me some gloves and was excited by how cheap they were. I said I'd run through them in a month and sure enough, utter garbage.

I suspect this would continue to be true with guns. It's also put a few things into perspective for me about guns I have been looking at. I'm thinking saving up 1600 dollars is the right call and will open up some doors to a quality pistola for me. I really only want one. I could live with buying two, because I probably will, but I don't want a collection.

I'm a notorious cheapskate myself, so I can sympathize. The thing is, I'm not about junk, I'm about value. I will pay extra for the quality if it is actually there, but I do not believe in "buying the brand name" as some folks do.

I guess the core question is: what does the Old Man want out of a carry piece? By that I mean is he interested in features other than price?

Also: is he an experienced shooter? If so, he may well enjoy buying something cheap and tuning it into a match-grade weapon. There are people like that.

He has a lot of shooting experience He's mentioned really enjoying shooting the Barretta M9 back in the day, it was his assigned weapon at one point. He also carried a 1911 at some point and M16s, all of this while in the Army. He grew up around rifles and had to hunt for food from time to time. He got back into shooting several years ago with black power pistols, which are loads of fun. From there he got his CCP, the world is getting crazy and he's 73. We usually shoot a few 22 pistols he has and a few riffles also in 22. I think 7 or 8 firearms in total not counting the black powder pistols. He goes to the range quite a bit, and a membership there.
I have no idea if he thinks he's encouraging me or actually wants one of those little pistols. I think if he did buy it he'd take it with him on his motorcycle club trips. Because it could be packed easily. It feels more like he's just throwing money at something because he can not because he cares much about it. I was planning to look for something else to recommend he look into. Which leads me to Glock. The shop I was at today is part of a discount program for Veterans and police. Apparently it's a good discount. I don't know much about Glocks outside of the name. As far as the pistol in question I am not aware of anything special that can be done to it aside from maybe a change of sites.

Glocks are fine. They're the AR15 of pistols. Modularity and customizability out the wazoo. You can get em cheap or very expensive. Many caliber options as well.

I personally don't like them a ton. They are quite wide, which for conceal carry is a negative to me. The lack of a manual safety is also a personal issue for me. I just like having the tactile motion of switching the safety on and off. And I just prefer metal framed handguns. I like weight. But that's just me.

 warhead01 wrote:
I don't know much about Glocks outside of the name. As far as the pistol in question I am not aware of anything special that can be done to it aside from maybe a change of sites.

I'm not a fan of Glocks and the reason I asked is that snub-nosed revolvers can also be inexpensive and very dependable. Because the magazine does not run through the grips, much more variety in grip styles are available.

I don't like glocks to much. Civilian issues ones are not as precise as other weapons (we mostly shoot for sporting at 25m in my range), although I like the ergonomics. I think I'll get one nonetheless at some point because there are so many of them on second hand market in France that you can grab a decent one for like 400 euros.

Military issue Glock in France has the heaviest trigger for safety reasons so it's not great

 warhead01 wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:
Any thoughts on the SCCY CPX-1 or SCCy DVG 1 ?

my dad is looking at one but the reviews on them, I can't tell if they're good, ok or crap.
My Dad has a thing about always buying cheap and I think that's probably a very poor idea for a self defense pocket gun. I know he has the money for something more expensive. He just always buys cheap, it's irritating. He bought me some gloves and was excited by how cheap they were. I said I'd run through them in a month and sure enough, utter garbage.

I suspect this would continue to be true with guns. It's also put a few things into perspective for me about guns I have been looking at. I'm thinking saving up 1600 dollars is the right call and will open up some doors to a quality pistola for me. I really only want one. I could live with buying two, because I probably will, but I don't want a collection.

I'm a notorious cheapskate myself, so I can sympathize. The thing is, I'm not about junk, I'm about value. I will pay extra for the quality if it is actually there, but I do not believe in "buying the brand name" as some folks do.

I guess the core question is: what does the Old Man want out of a carry piece? By that I mean is he interested in features other than price?

Also: is he an experienced shooter? If so, he may well enjoy buying something cheap and tuning it into a match-grade weapon. There are people like that.

He has a lot of shooting experience He's mentioned really enjoying shooting the Barretta M9 back in the day, it was his assigned weapon at one point. He also carried a 1911 at some point and M16s, all of this while in the Army. He grew up around rifles and had to hunt for food from time to time. He got back into shooting several years ago with black power pistols, which are loads of fun. From there he got his CCP, the world is getting crazy and he's 73. We usually shoot a few 22 pistols he has and a few riffles also in 22. I think 7 or 8 firearms in total not counting the black powder pistols. He goes to the range quite a bit, and a membership there.
I have no idea if he thinks he's encouraging me or actually wants one of those little pistols. I think if he did buy it he'd take it with him on his motorcycle club trips. Because it could be packed easily. It feels more like he's just throwing money at something because he can not because he cares much about it. I was planning to look for something else to recommend he look into. Which leads me to Glock. The shop I was at today is part of a discount program for Veterans and police. Apparently it's a good discount. I don't know much about Glocks outside of the name. As far as the pistol in question I am not aware of anything special that can be done to it aside from maybe a change of sites.

If he enjoyed shooting the M9, and has lots of experience using it as a service weapon, why doesn't he get an M9? Are they expensive?

They're known to be a solid, dependable sidearm.

Civilian ones are lottery. Either you get a great one, either it sucks.

Happened to several people in my range and that's a spread opinion on french firearm forums

 warhead01 wrote:
Any thoughts on the SCCY CPX-1 or SCCy DVG 1 ?

my dad is looking at one but the reviews on them, I can't tell if they're good, ok or crap.
My Dad has a thing about always buying cheap and I think that's probably a very poor idea for a self defense pocket gun. I know he has the money for something more expensive. He just always buys cheap, it's irritating. He bought me some gloves and was excited by how cheap they were. I said I'd run through them in a month and sure enough, utter garbage.

I suspect this would continue to be true with guns. It's also put a few things into perspective for me about guns I have been looking at. I'm thinking saving up 1600 dollars is the right call and will open up some doors to a quality pistola for me. I really only want one. I could live with buying two, because I probably will, but I don't want a collection.

We have a CPX-1 that my wife wanted because it was in a cool blue cammo pattern and her favorite color is blue.

Trigger is garbage, WAY too much pull before bang. Ours has the external thumb safety and there is a molded ridge on the grip the safety hits against that rubs the snot outta the web of your thumb if you're holding the pistol correctly to fire it. I think I got 4 magazines for it, and 2 seem to not feed well/cause jams.



You can see the ridge I'm talking about in that picture.

Plus side, super safe gun. You have to REALLY want to pull the trigger to get it to go bang, a negligent discharge is about impossible. Trying to teach my daughter to use it had to stress just a long smooth continuous pull.

All in all, would NOT recommend.

 CptJake wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:
Any thoughts on the SCCY CPX-1 or SCCy DVG 1 ?

Spoiler:

my dad is looking at one but the reviews on them, I can't tell if they're good, ok or crap.
My Dad has a thing about always buying cheap and I think that's probably a very poor idea for a self defense pocket gun. I know he has the money for something more expensive. He just always buys cheap, it's irritating. He bought me some gloves and was excited by how cheap they were. I said I'd run through them in a month and sure enough, utter garbage.

I suspect this would continue to be true with guns. It's also put a few things into perspective for me about guns I have been looking at. I'm thinking saving up 1600 dollars is the right call and will open up some doors to a quality pistola for me. I really only want one. I could live with buying two, because I probably will, but I don't want a collection.

We have a CPX-1 that my wife wanted because it was in a cool blue cammo pattern and her favorite color is blue.

Trigger is garbage, WAY too much pull before bang. Ours has the external thumb safety and there is a molded ridge on the grip the safety hits against that rubs the snot outta the web of your thumb if you're holding the pistol correctly to fire it. I think I got 4 magazines for it, and 2 seem to not feed well/cause jams.



You can see the ridge I'm talking about in that picture.

Plus side, super safe gun. You have to REALLY want to pull the trigger to get it to go bang, a negligent discharge is about impossible. Trying to teach my daughter to use it had to stress just a long smooth continuous pull.

All in all, would NOT recommend.

This was extremely helpful! Thankyou very much, this was very helpful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haighus wrote:

If he enjoyed shooting the M9, and has lots of experience using it as a service weapon, why doesn't he get an M9? Are they expensive?

They're known to be a solid, dependable sidearm.

I really don't know.
He latched on to 22's for some reason. I get it if it's just about plinking on a regular basis as it's very affordable. I just don't get it as much for carry when he has the means to gets something that hits harder. A 22 will kill a person sure but I would feel better if it was closer to 100%. Him sharing a 9MM with me may be a step in that direction.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Civilian ones are lottery. Either you get a great one, either it sucks.

Happened to several people in my range and that's a spread opinion on french firearm forums

I had no idea that was the case. I've found the M3's for around a grand but had no idea they'd be possible problem children. Gives me something to think about. It was on my list. Thankfully my "wish" list is getting smaller. So there's that.


This whole set of replies since my first post has been very helpful. Thanks a bunch all of you.

Btw, problems encountered with the M9 in my range were precision ones. Half would spray around stupidly, the other half would be sniper grade.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and happy to help as best I can! But that gun looks surely way more terrible with that experience in hand...

I really don't like .22 LR as a self defense caliber. Rimfire is just inherently less reliable than centerfire. Shot placement is king, but click and no bang - particularly in an autoloader - is not a good thing.

If anyone wants the ne plus ultra of cheap self-defense pistols, look for vintage .32 Long revolver. You can find ones in mint condition for less than $200 and .32 long has twice the horsepower of .22 LR with very little recoil.

While not common in shops, .32 long is about 50 cents a round online. Not hard to find. I think the cowboy action crowd are warming up to it. I've shot of ton of it in small pistols and it is mild but accurate. There are target pistols for the Euro market in it that are very expensive.

And with .22lr it is small enough that the chances of it just making the target very angry, even if it is a technically lethal shot, are quite high. Lethal damage isn't very useful if its only going to be lethal 20-30 minutes from now.

This really applies to all small calibers, its just a sliding scale of stopping power. Yeah, "muh stopping power" is a bit of a meme but it really does matter at the extremely small end of the scale. 9mm vs .45 is a mostly academic comparison. 9mm vs .22/.32 is an order of magnitude.

My recommendation for self-defense is to use the largest caliber you can reliably control.

OTOH a .22 is going to give you accurate hits as fast as you can pull the trigger with minimal recoil. Muzzle energy with 9mm is ~2-3x higher but how fast can you get accurate hits with it, especially from a concealable weapon? And how likely are you to encounter someone who, on being shot, will fight to the death to kill you rather than deciding it's time to GTFO before they get shot again? Everything is compromises if you're talking about using a pistol at all and a .22 you can conceal properly is better than a 9mm left at home because you can't.

Never use a .22lr for SD by choice. Buy a 9mm. And live by this, the pistol is a tool to get to the shotgun. A shotgun is a tool to get to the rifle.

I'll stick with .45 ACP for SD. I believe in needing to shoot someone once. 23 years of carrying/utilizing 9mm in the US Army has poisoned me for the round, and definitely on the M9.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
OTOH a .22 is going to give you accurate hits as fast as you can pull the trigger with minimal recoil. Muzzle energy with 9mm is ~2-3x higher but how fast can you get accurate hits with it, especially from a concealable weapon? And how likely are you to encounter someone who, on being shot, will fight to the death to kill you rather than deciding it's time to GTFO before they get shot again? Everything is compromises if you're talking about using a pistol at all and a .22 you can conceal properly is better than a 9mm left at home because you can't.

9mm is really easy to control with just a bit of training, really, if you are a more or less regular shooter, you should be able to pour a fair few bullets in a man sized target at ranges between 10-20 meters even in rapid fire with reasonable hits.

Hand loading your ammo is also of great help as you can use lighter loads for better control if your gun accepts it.

I understand the points. And it's been very good food for thought.

This might irk a nerve or two.
So, I shoot Remington Thunderbolt. I get boxes of 500. I haven't had a click and no bang this year. I don't think I shoot a lot really I'm just shooting about 71 rounds a week right now. That'll move up with the new pistol. All the magazines are compatible. Huzzah.

Right now the most common issue is a feed issue, where the top round sits at an angle just a little two and won't feed. The next round goes in fine.

I am a little surprised to about not having any ammo issues this year. When we stated shooting the other ammo, Winchester, seemed to be less reliable.
I'm not against 9MM.
I have considered 45. It's an option.
I do like the idea of not having to hit a target more than twice.

Also, 9mm is tremendously useless with FMJ bullets, (still not stoked at the idea of getting shot at or shooting someone even with 9mm fmj or 22) but there are many other forms of bullets that inflict significant damages on tissues. Those are the ones used for self defense.

9mm fmj are not even useful to pierce through armour in my experience as a 9mm Makarov fmj bullet failed to penetrate my self welded 5mm steel tube I use as a target pole. I doubt it'd pull off enough energy to fracture a bulletproof.plate.

warhead01 wrote:I do like the idea of not having to hit a target more than twice.

There are numerous instances of people taking 10+ hits of .45ACP and staying mobile. No caliber can guarantee results. Shot placement matters most.

Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote: 9mm fmj are not even useful to pierce through armour in my experience as a 9mm Makarov fmj bullet

9mm Mak is a lighter, slower bullet than 9x19 with only around two-thirds the kinetic energy despite same bullet diameter. In military loadings, 9x19 NATO has about double the energy. Bit apples and oranges. Just saying.

Either way, hollowpoints are ideal for defensive use. 9mm might not have such a bad reputation if Hague Convention signatories/observers weren't constrained to FMJ.

9mm is fine if you use a real self-defense round. Some +P hollow/soft points will do just fine. If recoil is a issue, try using a heavier gun. Get something metal framed instead of polymer. More weight = less recoil.

.45 ACP is of course king in my eyes, but 9mm or .40 is also acceptable.

A lot of people who are nervous first time shooters gravitate towards the smallest pistol with the lightest caliber because they're worried about recoil. But the truth is a tiny .380 pistol might have more felt recoil than something heftier due to its low weight. I honestly think my 1911 has softer recoil than my Glock 40.

-I don't think too highly of DAO guns in general and that goes double for really cheap ones. You'll shoot a striker fired gun better, a DA/SA even better than that, and single action (like your .22) the best.

-If you are buying just one gun with the intent to carry it, I'd say get a mid sized/compact model like a Glock 19 or Commander sized 1911 rather than a full sized handgun (Glock 17, 1911 govt model, Beretta 92 etc) or micro compact. Full sized guns are more limited in concealed carry options and micro compacts are harder to shoot (you can mitigate that if the micro gun has magazines with grip extensions, like the S&W Shield Plus).

-Regarding saving for a really "good" gun, $1600 is an odd price point that will get you most guns outside of high end 19/2011s. At this price point you are paying for the name for some guns. Did you have something sepcific in mind for this price? Most good mid sized guns are in the $6-1100 range, with metal 1911 or DA/SA guns being on the top end of that and striker guns on the lower. Don't buy a Kimber as your one and only carry gun.

-A Commander sized 1911 would be the perfect carry gun for you but the price is high for these even from the budget 1911 brands, more than what a good striker gun would cost.

-Don't carry a .22 unless thats all you have. I've said a lot on this subject upthread and don't want to be a broken record.

-All magazine fed rimfires will have the issues you describe.

-As your dad likes deals/projects he might like PSA. They sell decent/acceptable budget guns and offer crazy package deals like these:

https://palmettostatearmory.com/psa-pa-15-16-nitride-m4-carbine-5-56-nato-moe-rifle-odg-psa-dagger-compact-swr-9mm-pistol-sniper-green.html

https://palmettostatearmory.com/psa-dagger-compact-9mm-pistol-with-extreme-carry-cut-doctor-slide-non-threaded-barrel-with-10-15rd-mags-and-bag-black.html

Both of those guns have some of the most after market parts available (the Dagger is a Glock clone). You could tool up both of them over time into pretty high end firearms as a project, if you wanted. Alternately you could get an AR lower receiver from a better brand for the roller mark, but its still just a serialized piece of aluminum.
PSA is based in the south and might have a store in driving distance for you otherwise you'll have your purchases transferred to your local gun shop like the rest of us (ask them first).

-You are on the right track doing a lot of research before making your purchases. Keep going. Take individual experiences/reviews/etc with a grain of salt.

Desert Island Dakka

A poser by An Ignorant Tit.

Premise is Because Reasons, you’ve become stranded upon a deserted Island, which has indigenous game.

Because Same Reasons, you had the foresight to pack up to three guns, and a reasonable amount of ammo for each. Let’s say two boxes for every one shooter. And because you have Marvellous Foresight, related to Said Reasons? Those can be split as you like between the three guns.

What’s your pick, and why?

Me? Knowing eff all about guns? I think something Fairly Basic all round. Some kind of rifle, for precision. Double barrelled shotgun for ease of maintenance, and either a robust handgun or robust revolver for scaring off anything that looks like it might try to do me in.

In terms of ammo? I feel I’d want to lean into birdshot type shells for the shotgun. Or whatever gives a decent spread to make up for my lack of accuracy. Rifle? Sorry I just don’t know my bore from a boar, but maybe a dozen rounds or so for it. Everything else is handgun/revolver ammo.

Yes I expect more in depth and less stupid answers from the rest of you, because whilst we’re all idiots in our own way, I’m particularly idiotic and ignorant on this

What island? How long for? What game?

I'd take a supressed .45 caliber lever gun with hard cast lead rounds. 44Magnum, .45Colt.

Hard hitting enough to kill almost any game, not too destructive against something small.



You could use it for almost everything.

To be fair, I have got no hunting background for now, nor am I too versed in matters of survival and crisis loadout. So Im a bit at loss to answer.

But I hope I'll get to hunt in the near future, as when I become a civilian again in 2 weeks time I'll go back home and get in touch with my neibourgh who manages local hunts!

You’re asking questions I can’t answer 🤣🤣🤣

Maréchal, despite being someone actually familiar with shooters, “whatever you reckon might be cool” is still an acceptable answer!

If for coolness? Then, my saiga 103 because I like it a lot, a MAS36 as longer ranged weapon because I have to be a damned chauvinist at all possible time including end of the world or desert island. Finally, some sort of 22 for very small stuff and, to be fair, overall very good precision in it's distance frame. So my TOZ 78m.

On a serious note, there used to be an argument for SKS and it's caliber to be exceptionnal survival guns, but as i'm poorly versed on the matter I've got no opinion.

And on a not at all serious note, maréchal des logis is in fact a sergeant in some branches of the french army... And I happen to be one, in fact!

Maréchal on the other hand is a Marshall, highest rank, even above generals, as it is maybe in the US and so on as well. So you're actually all promoting me and I thank you for that

A break-action over-under 12 gauge with #5 bird shot. 2 boxes would be 40 shells.

A Type 56 SKS(which has a bayonet). 2 boxes of jacketed softpoints would be 80 rounds(going to cheat with Tula as the manufacturer instead of the more typical 20 round boxes)

And just to be a double dipping git, a sawed off double barrel with 2 more boxes of #5 birdshot.

Desert islands are usually quite dense jungles, so you're not going to be taking long range shots at anything so iron sights would be plenty to take down any small deer or pigs which you manage to spot. The reason for a break action over a pump is to reduce moving parts and minimize the chance of the guns degrading. But the salt air is going to be hellacious on them. SKS is accurate and relatively simple as well, and also has a bayonet for extra utility.

The spread of shotguns is a bit exaggerated in media. You can definitely still miss with them. Bird shot spreads the most, and even it is much tighter than you'd think. Think 6-8 inches at 50 ft and rapidly tightening as you get closer. Of course if you had a cluster of sea birds hanging around something on the beach you could probably get several with a single shot. Though birds are smart and you might find them simply avoiding the island for a while after that.

Hunting pigs and deer will give the most food, but once you've burned the 7.62x39 you will be down to hunting birds. You could swap out for slugs or buckshot to increase your milage of course.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
9mm fmj are not even useful to pierce through armour in my experience as a 9mm Makarov fmj bullet failed to penetrate my self welded 5mm steel tube I use as a target pole. I doubt it'd pull off enough energy to fracture a bulletproof.plate.

If the dude trying to rob me has the money for high-end body armor, why does he need the $20 I have in my wallet?

Lots of good points, but I have some quibbles. Let's start on a positive note, though: the M9 has terrible ergonomics. I like Berettas, but I hate shooting the M9. I mean, it's better than a Glock, but that's not saying much.

As for caliber, I will repeat that shot placement is king. People are actually quite fragile, and if you make the little holes in the right places, they fall down.

Obviously, ballistic performance matters, but I feel Americans in particular fixate on this because it gives us something to talk about. We love big guns. We make rifle caliber handguns because we have a near-masochistic love of painful recoil.

But in the real world, even .25 ACP will prove lethal. It mimics .22LR performance but is more reliable. For people with small, weak hands, it is an excellent choice.

I'm pretty big on .32 ACP to be honest. Someone upthread talked about felt recoil in .380, and in many cases, a small .380 will kick just as hard as a 9mm. However, many .380 frames were also designed for .32 ACP, and if you can find one of those, the overall feel and control is phenomenal. FMJ .32 will get decent penetration, has very low recoil in the right frame, and is quick to recover. My daughters love it and they destroy targets with it.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
9mm fmj are not even useful to pierce through armour in my experience as a 9mm Makarov fmj bullet failed to penetrate my self welded 5mm steel tube I use as a target pole. I doubt it'd pull off enough energy to fracture a bulletproof.plate.

If the dude trying to rob me has the money for high-end body armor, why does he need the $20 I have in my wallet?

Lots of good points, but I have some quibbles. Let's start on a positive note, though: the M9 has terrible ergonomics. I like Berettas, but I hate shooting the M9. I mean, it's better than a Glock, but that's not saying much.

As for caliber, I will repeat that shot placement is king. People are actually quite fragile, and if you make the little holes in the right places, they fall down.

Obviously, ballistic performance matters, but I feel Americans in particular fixate on this because it gives us something to talk about. We love big guns. We make rifle caliber handguns because we have a near-masochistic love of painful recoil.

But in the real world, even .25 ACP will prove lethal. It mimics .22LR performance but is more reliable. For people with small, weak hands, it is an excellent choice.

I'm pretty big on .32 ACP to be honest. Someone upthread talked about felt recoil in .380, and in many cases, a small .380 will kick just as hard as a 9mm. However, many .380 frames were also designed for .32 ACP, and if you can find one of those, the overall feel and control is phenomenal. FMJ .32 will get decent penetration, has very low recoil in the right frame, and is quick to recover. My daughters love it and they destroy targets with it.

I couldn’t agree with you more, that shot placement is key. You can have the most bad ass weapon on earth but if you don’t train with it, it ain’t gona matter. That being said at least google the ballistics of the type of bullet you are going to carry so you have a little idea what it will do if you decide to use it.

Training is very key of course. It's also important to remember that in a real situation the best you can hope for is center mass. You're not going to calmly put one in the heart or in the head in a real situation. Its going to be " Oh "

IE: Banking on your fine motor skills in a real situation is a bad idea and should not be relied upon to make up for any shortcomings the choice of caliber might make. It is a variable you have control over, so making it as much in your favor as possible is the best choice.

Do you trust yourself to have good enough aim to make .25 or .32 ACP immediately stop the threat?

First point, I looked up the energies of 9 para and 9 mak, I must say, while I knew the latter to be weaker I underestimated it by a margin, so I stand corrected.

I couldn't agree more than shoot placement is king but I'm being realistic. While I'm by no means a bad shooter, in an actual firefoght of agression, I won't tell you I'll keep calm enough to actual make THE shot that matter.

Maybe this is also a military trope but from people's experience on mission and parts of the training, we're told to maximise first volley to gain initiative, by spewing a hail of rapid shots before returning to more carefully aimed ones...
As you Americans can actually carry and have got actual data and experience on it, I'll take your word on it anyway.

Still, some calibers are probably better than others, even if all a lethal.

Btw, James Reeves released a video were he talks about how the jurors gender and the weapon you used to defend yourself influences the verdict. Was kind interesting so I'm putting the link. It's not absurd in France either and has got a history of being true to, at least from second hand experience from 2 friends who where sued for cases involving guns.

https://youtu.be/GlIamnGDA-M?feature=shared

 Grey Templar wrote:
Do you trust yourself to have good enough aim to make .25 or .32 ACP immediately stop the threat?

Alternatively, do you trust yourself to get an incapacitating hit with your one shot of .45 out of a tiny concealable gun that doesn't have the mass to absorb recoil? Or would you have a lower-recoil caliber that lets you get your subsequent shots on target faster?

And yeah, I'll grant that a larger caliber out of a full-size pistol is great but in most cases where a civilian is going to have that full-size pistol available they could have a rifle or shotgun instead, and in that case the choice is obvious.

I tend to carry a Glock 26 (9mm). When looking for a carry gun I also fired a Glock 36 (same size, .45). I was accurate with both, but found I was getting off 3 good shots on the 9mm to about 2 on the .45. The 9mm also holds 11 (one in chamber) vs 6 (if I recall correctly on the .45). I decided the more shots + quicker follow ups was more important to me than the .45. Of course I mitigate the stopping power delta by using good self defense rounds.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Do you trust yourself to have good enough aim to make .25 or .32 ACP immediately stop the threat?

If that's what you train with, yes. I dislike the advice to use the biggest caliber you can handle because it encourages people to take on what might be too much gun out of fear that the most comfortable caliber won't work.

I've seen the results of this approach: less motivation to practice, shorter practice sessions, less overall competence.

When people find the right size and fit, they have more motivation, put more rounds through the weapon, and have more confidence and competence.

There's also the issue of "program compliance" as Paul Harrell likes to say. Size and weight matter, and a nice, compact .32 is a lot easier to hide and a lot less burdensome than a full-sized 1911.

If strapping on is uncomfortable, or time-consuming, there's less chance you will do it. I think many people have multiple postures, and while all my guns have long since been lost in freak canoe and pontoon boat accidents, when I was still in the National Guard, my carry rig was in fact a full-sized polymer pistol which resided comfortably under my uniform blouse. The riggers belt rendered it comfortable, and if anyone wanted to go after a guy in military uniform, I figured I'd probably have a military arm to defend myself.

But in civvies, I'm just a face in a crowd, and a snubbie that is smaller than my cell phone is something that I can carry without a second thought with lots of different clothing options.

And for that reason, I'm a big fan of .32 Magnum, because you get the best of all worlds - light, small frame, low recoil, .38+P power and six shots.

Okay, not all worlds - that ammo is freaking expensive. But at least .32 Long isn't bad, and you can practice with that.

Didn't even now that round existed, I never encountered it

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Didn't even now that round existed, I never encountered it

It was created in the 1980s by revolver manufacturer Harrington and Richardson in partnership with Federal ammunition. That's why it's proper name is .32 H&R Magnum. For decades, the US was awash with small, inexpensive revolvers chambered for .32 Long, which I think still has a following in Europe for target shooting. At least I see auctions for high-end German guns chambered in it.

Anyway, .32 Magnum followed the same procedure as the other revolver "wildcat" cartridges - you add some powder because the straight-wall case can take it, and then make the frame a little more robust and now you've got more dakka.

Because it has a smaller diameter, one can use standard J-frame revolver blanks designed for .38 special loads because the smaller hole mean more structural strength to withstand the higher pressure. Thus, if you set the two revolvers next to each other, they are pretty much identical. That's very much by design, similar to how FN 1910s, Browning pocket hammerless, Walter PP and PPK all could be made in .32 or .380.

It never caught on, though it seems to be seeing a bit of a revival thanks to youtubers discovering it.

There is an even beefier .32 revolver round, .327 Federal Magnum, which uses the same principle to add even more powder to achieve .357 Magnum level velocities. This is achieved by using .357 frames but drilling them to .32. I've not shot one, but I'm not interested because the weight of a .357 snubbie is too much to interest me.

These revolvers are backwards compatible, btw. So a .327 Federal revolver can fire .32 H&R Mag, .32 Long and .32 Short. The .32 H&R Mag can fire .32 Long and .32 Short as well, etc.

For many years, .32 Long was a standard police caliber in the US. Teddy Roosevelt famously ordered NYPD to turn in their .38s and use .32s because they were more accurate with them.

that's educative, thanks, i'll take a look at french market for them out of curiosity and report back


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So after a very quick research, turns out it's considered an exotic caliber in France, with apparently few people even knowing it exists. Ammunition is available at 1 gunsmith (armurerie auxerre) but guns were nowhere to be found safe importing them yourself.

Mostly, there were none on naturabuy, which is our main internet platform for trading gun and all the related on the internet. When you can't find something there, it has got to be pretty rare!

So at least in m part of europe - didn't really fired up (sorry, tried my best at this pun).

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Do you trust yourself to have good enough aim to make .25 or .32 ACP immediately stop the threat?

Alternatively, do you trust yourself to get an incapacitating hit with your one shot of .45 out of a tiny concealable gun that doesn't have the mass to absorb recoil? Or would you have a lower-recoil caliber that lets you get your subsequent shots on target faster?

And yeah, I'll grant that a larger caliber out of a full-size pistol is great but in most cases where a civilian is going to have that full-size pistol available they could have a rifle or shotgun instead, and in that case the choice is obvious.

I CC a full size 1911.

They're actually quite concealable. More than a Glock IMO due to being slimmer.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Do you trust yourself to have good enough aim to make .25 or .32 ACP immediately stop the threat?

Alternatively, do you trust yourself to get an incapacitating hit with your one shot of .45 out of a tiny concealable gun that doesn't have the mass to absorb recoil? Or would you have a lower-recoil caliber that lets you get your subsequent shots on target faster?

And yeah, I'll grant that a larger caliber out of a full-size pistol is great but in most cases where a civilian is going to have that full-size pistol available they could have a rifle or shotgun instead, and in that case the choice is obvious.

I CC a full size 1911.

They're actually quite concealable. More than a Glock IMO due to being slimmer.

Now I want to ask how tall you are or if you think that matters. I'm 5'8" and I thought it might be too difficult to carry a full sized. How do you do it what do you recommend and what do you not recommend. I own a behind the back holster, wasn't an expensive one and i thought that might work. it's not uncomfortable at all but I'm not sure how much it prints. Rock Island Armory stuff for the most part would be very affordable for me. I've bookmarked a few but I'm still looking around.


This thread has been very good.

Small of the back or if wearing a jacket an under the arm holster(benefit of also having 2 spare mags on the opposite shoulder). The latter is far more comfortable, but only works in cooler weather.

I'm 6', so not a small dude, but I don't think that really would affect how I would carry it. If I was smaller the issue would be getting my hands around the 1911, not concealing it.

Still always on the lookout for something better. Conceptually, I would like some sort of pocket insert that just takes up a pocket in my pants. Maybe even some kind of double pocket where I can have my wallet in the outside pouch while the 1911 is in the inner one. Maybe I should teach myself to sew and make it myself.

I also have my Glock on my ccw, but its .5" thicker and just feels fatter and more obvious. Plus the whole no external safety while its riding around in your pants. I don't know how anyone appendix carries those things.

Grey templar, what do you think about open carry and is it legal where you live?

The gun belt I just got is amazing. Once it's set it doesn't move. It's amazing. I hope it lasts.

Truth be told I only discovered the small of the back holster because of the show the Blacklist. I t occurred to me Red rides around in cars like a lot so it might be comfortable. If I continue with that I expect I'll have to buy a better one or different pants. Seems like it needs either one more loop at the center of the holster or I need more belt loops. Haven't tried it with the gun belt yet.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Do you trust yourself to have good enough aim to make .25 or .32 ACP immediately stop the threat?

Alternatively, do you trust yourself to get an incapacitating hit with your one shot of .45 out of a tiny concealable gun that doesn't have the mass to absorb recoil? Or would you have a lower-recoil caliber that lets you get your subsequent shots on target faster?

And yeah, I'll grant that a larger caliber out of a full-size pistol is great but in most cases where a civilian is going to have that full-size pistol available they could have a rifle or shotgun instead, and in that case the choice is obvious.

Why would it be obvious? Pistols exist for a reason- they are convenient sidearms. A rifle or shotgun is not a sidearm. It is like saying why would anyone wear a sword when they could carry a spear?* Because you can't wear a spear and still do your day-to-day stuff. Same applies to a rifle or shotgun, can't easily wear them and do other things (like drive a truck).

*When walking around town. Obviously someone can wear a sword and carry a spear, but that applies to pistols and rifles too.

I guess you can carry your shotgun around attached to its sling but wouldn't you look like a weirdo?

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Grey templar, what do you think about open carry and is it legal where you live?

No, but I wish it was. There is also a possibility that it will be legal in the very near future depending on how a certain court case pans out.

Open Carry does make you a potential target if someone is planning on something nefarious and notices you, however that can be mitigated by being discrete. But if a good number of people are open carrying in an area regularly, then that is a major disincentive for someone to do something. But beyond that I think it should be legal just on principle, open or concealed shouldn't make a difference legally speaking. If you aren't harassing or doing something else illegal with it then nobody should care what or how you are carrying.

Of course I wouldn't carry a rifle around at all times. But I might stuff a small one in my truck. It's nice to just have it as an option.

To avoid getting to far down the rabbit hole of Politics, I'll just leave it by saying society would be far better if carrying weapons was seen as normal and was normalized. If even just 10% of people in public spaces were carrying, either concealed or open, the world would be a safer place.

 Haighus wrote:
Why would it be obvious? Pistols exist for a reason- they are convenient sidearms. A rifle or shotgun is not a sidearm. It is like saying why would anyone wear a sword when they could carry a spear?* Because you can't wear a spear and still do your day-to-day stuff. Same applies to a rifle or shotgun, can't easily wear them and do other things (like drive a truck).

*When walking around town. Obviously someone can wear a sword and carry a spear, but that applies to pistols and rifles too.

Important point: that comment was about a full-size pistol vs. a rifle/shotgun. IOW, a heavy, bulky, difficult to conceal weapon that as a civilian you're unlikely to be carrying outside of your home or certain wilderness activities. And in those situations you can also have a rifle or shotgun, either of which is a far better choice than the pistol. If you're carrying a weapon in your day-to-day activities it's probably going to have to be a compact pistol where you don't have the mass to shrug off recoil and accuracy concerns.

Interesting.

Even conceal carry is illegal in France, as I already said, and thus, to prevent people making up the excuse of transportation to the rangew you are obliged to neutralise you gun for transportation and conceal it. Technically, you can be sued for walking the 100m from park place to range with the rifle outside of its case and visible.

The only civilian exception is hunting, during the hunt.

Licenses to carry guns are very rare privileges mostly granted to either politicians or police informers. People who consider themselves at risk, in fact. I don't think average policemen are allowed to carry outside of service, that'd be worth a check.

Not that unlike Serbia, gunsmith won't be allowed to carry a gun even though they sell dangerous and potentially very attractive merch.

Personal opinion, I wouldn't care that people ran around with their gun, I mean, in a sense, you see what there up too then.

That's more or less how law works here.

I also agree with ARPAC's proposals for strictly regulated cc, not in the sense that few licenses should be given out, but in that it should be necessary to evaluate the shotters ability and mental health regularly. I know my compatriots and don't trust them to carry unchecked.

This thread is for discussing your personal firearms and their uses. It is not for discussing politics, military procurement, the morality behind carrying weapons etc. Stick to the topic please or be removed from the discussion.

Alright folks, to get the thread going again, I've got a question for you.

Say you have got a historical weapon, as for example my SVT40, my brother's MAS36, an older hunting design such as a Darne... or whatever.

Do you mind making modifications on them or do you prefer leaving them as they are?

Personally I can't even begin to consider making any modification. I've been often urged to drill my SVT40 to fit a scope on it for example, as it is apparently a relatively simple operation, or to mount a scout scope mount on my mosin nagant, but... no, I just can't get over it and do such modifications! I like keeping them as they are.

What about you?

Rule Number #1: Don't Bubba your collectable firearms.

I wouldn't consider putting an accurate reproduction scope on a gun that did/could have it to be a problem, but putting some modern abomination is where the line should be drawn. IE: reproduction PU scope on a Mosen = ok. Putting some rail system to allow a modern scope = not fine.

If you have an SVT40 I wouldn't touch it. That thing is fairly rare as is. Mosins are less so, but its still a shame every time someone slaps a polymer stock on one.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Say you have got a historical weapon, as for example my SVT40, my brother's MAS36, an older hunting design such as a Darne... or whatever.

Do you mind making modifications on them or do you prefer leaving them as they are?

I think the key word is "historical." When guns were "bubbafied," it was because they were current production and there was a glut on the market. Modern collectors have a fit over sporterized service rifles, but those were the cheapest options open for hunting or target shooting, which was why they were modified.

Notice that contemporaneous weapons that were not flooding the market were left "as is." Not a lot of people modded their war trophy Lugers or Type 14 Nambus.

Some weapons were rechambered, and I'm specifically thinking of "shaved" Webley Mark VI revolvers that were converted to take full moon clips for .45 ACP. Again, we hate it now, but at the time the UK had piles and piles of these and was transitioning to the Enfield in .38. Since .455 wasn't a US cartridge, the conversion made sense from a marketing standpoint (though not from a safety one!).

To put it another way, if surplus M9s were routed through the CMP at bargain-basement prices, I'd be tempted to get one and modify the crap out of it without any remorse.

A hundred years later, people would complain about it, though.

M9s are still produced though. The SKS and Mosin are not produced anymore*

*SKS are still produced in China in small numbers but that is hardly enough to justify putting a beautiful SKS in a polymer stock.

Truthfully, the blame lies on "hunting rifles" being hideously expensive. Thus leading to people who just want a cheap rifle with a scope on it to molest historical relics

 Grey Templar wrote:
M9s are still produced though. The SKS and Mosin are not produced anymore*

*SKS are still produced in China in small numbers but that is hardly enough to justify putting a beautiful SKS in a polymer stock.

Truthfully, the blame lies on "hunting rifles" being hideously expensive. Thus leading to people who just want a cheap rifle with a scope on it to molest historical relics

If you save the original stock, I don't see the problem. I have replacement grips for several vintage pistols because the originals were falling apart. To prevent further damage, I removed them. I can always switch them back.

As to the SKS ever being considered rare or vintage, I doubt it. It's kind of like Mosin rifles. Yeah, modding them sounds terrible until you consider that something like 38 million of them were made.

Chinese production of the SKS has all but ceased because they already made a gazillion of them. The only reason they aren't being converted into coat racks is the US put an import ban on the. If that ever went away, people would be making bicycles out of them.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Do you mind making modifications on them or do you prefer leaving them as they are?

Leave it as-is unless it's a reversible conversion and you keep the original parts. Why damage a weapon where the value is entirely in being a historical piece? Now that surplus prices have climbed beyond new production stuff there's no point in modifying a historical weapon to make a more expensive and less effective version of something you could buy new off the shelf from any random gun shop.

Pretty strong reaction here but that's how I view it as well.

My SVT40 is a 1943 infantry version, hence why it can't accommodate a scope anymore.

Same for my mosin nagant.

Only time I thought about making a bubba abomination was when I stumbled both accross a cheap mosin nagant because the wood was damaged beyond repair and a second hand archangel stock. But in the end I passed my turn on that one.

On the other hand, I was thinking about buying another AK (maybe a polish wbp one for instance) and kit it from the ground up just for laughs and giggles as a long term project.

First because it sounds stupidly fun, second, because I'll have to stop buying guns at some point an I could see instead buying parts steadily... but that wouldn't be a "historical" firearm so everything is good.

Could still have a go at my saiga for that matter but I'm happy with it as it is.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Same for my mosin nagant.

Only time I thought about making a bubba abomination was when I stumbled both accross a cheap mosin nagant because the wood was damaged beyond repair and a second hand archangel stock. But in the end I passed my turn on that one.

Mosin rifles are still plentiful here and often cheap. Not as cheap as they were in the 1990s, when you could them for $100 or less, but Enemy at the Gates convinced people that they were elite sniper weapons.

A lot comes down to what you are dealing with. The M44 versions are mostly post-war, so the coolness of a wartime rifle just isn't there. A 1941 production rifle, on the other hand, will have seen things.

As has been pointed out, surplus is now high enough that there no cost advantage in modifying it. Cheaper to buy a used hunting rifle online.

Seems to be a lot of agreement on this topic (I feel the same too, my surplus guns only get mods that can be reversed). So how about shooting your historical weapons?

I know some people collect firearms more to look at and own a rare/old model than actually shoot. One of the local folks I've shot with has a ton of obscure bolt action rifles, Chinese mausers, that kind of stuff.

To me it's a tool though, and while I appreciate people who preserve old things, these are made to be used. I wouldn't toss my nicely blued Tokarev in a pile of gravel, but it's not a safe queen either.

 ScarletRose wrote:
So how about shooting your historical weapons?

No reason not to, unless you know a particular piece is fragile and unsafe to shoot or you have some rare never-fired museum piece in flawless condition. Most of these guns were designed with fatigue lives way beyond what a normal hobbyist is going to reach so it's not like you're destroying it by using it.

Now, whether you can afford the obscure ammunition to use your favorite rare piece is a very different question...

 warhead01 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Do you trust yourself to have good enough aim to make .25 or .32 ACP immediately stop the threat?

Alternatively, do you trust yourself to get an incapacitating hit with your one shot of .45 out of a tiny concealable gun that doesn't have the mass to absorb recoil? Or would you have a lower-recoil caliber that lets you get your subsequent shots on target faster?

And yeah, I'll grant that a larger caliber out of a full-size pistol is great but in most cases where a civilian is going to have that full-size pistol available they could have a rifle or shotgun instead, and in that case the choice is obvious.

I CC a full size 1911.

They're actually quite concealable. More than a Glock IMO due to being slimmer.

Now I want to ask how tall you are or if you think that matters. I'm 5'8" and I thought it might be too difficult to carry a full sized. How do you do it what do you recommend and what do you not recommend. I own a behind the back holster, wasn't an expensive one and i thought that might work. it's not uncomfortable at all but I'm not sure how much it prints. Rock Island Armory stuff for the most part would be very affordable for me. I've bookmarked a few but I'm still looking around.


This thread has been very good.

Super late to the game, but I also carried a full size 1911, and I'm 5'9". You're stuck with either small of the back, or appendix carry if you don't want any part of it sticking out (I've appendix carried in a T-shirt and jeans, no other layers, even my wife didn't notice).

That being said, it wasn't the most comfortable thing for a day walking around town.

Appendix carry is... I... it just gives me the heebie jeebies to hold the family jewels under the glare of John Moses Browning.

I do shoot all of my historical guns regularly. The mas36 is rechambered in 30-284 nolasco and must be reloaded by hand, but my other historical guns are both in 7,62x54R.

This carttridge is very easy to come by in France. Surplus is still relatively affordable even with price surges last times, but I don't like using surplus in my SVT40 to much because they're cheap Chinese stuff that can quickly corrode it you missed anything while cleaning it.

Sport or hunting load with brass cases are also easy to find but usually range from 1 to 2 or 3 euros each.

I hand reload my 7,62x54r instead, so I ultimately save on the brass cases. Overall, qu have achieved better results with my tigr and mosin nagant this way.

I just need to really get some ligjter bullets for the SVT40, 180grs or 174grs (depending on what is available in store) is way too heavy for it past 50m. From a quick internet research, it seems it shot a bullet more along the line if 150grs.

In unrelated news, I continue to feed my bullpup addiction.

Wait, is that a steyr aug with drum mag?

Yes it is. Been wanting one for a while and finally got one.

So with the drums either side, how does one hold that?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Desert Island Dakka

Premise is Because Reasons, you’ve become stranded upon a deserted Island, which has indigenous game.

What no one is going with an air rifle? A modern version of this old thing - Girardoni air rifle, something like the Texan (I may be getting the name wrong) - would get around some ammo problems assuming you had spare parts of indeed just three of them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So with the drums either side, how does one hold that?

Bipod or just strength.


Without a bipod though and drum mags beeing notorious, it ain't a good idea.

Also desert island, k31 and the weight of the other weapons in ammo and a bajonett.

Bolt action since it avoids ammo waste. Bajonett because pointy metal usefull. More ammo because my eyesight ain't what it used to be.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So with the drums either side, how does one hold that?

I thought it would interfere with the sight picture, but it actually doesn't. The mag is further forward on the AUG than you'd think so its actually not a big deal.

Your cheek rests pretty much just behind and above the magwell so when shouldering the mag is just in the space between the gun and your chest.

Weight-wise its less awkward than the B-mag in an AR because the weight is better distributed.

Big advantage of bullpups. I found on English rifles, FAMAS and aug when I tried each time that this balances the gun mightily.

Not ready to purchase any bullpup anytime soon however, it's way out of reach for my wallet . And as I said, for rapid firing at the range and fun, I'm entirely happy with my saiga and it's optic, so I don't actually NEED another trifle to scratch that itch... but we all sat that and all know how it ends.

 ScarletRose wrote:
Seems to be a lot of agreement on this topic (I feel the same too, my surplus guns only get mods that can be reversed). So how about shooting your historical weapons?

I know some people collect firearms more to look at and own a rare/old model than actually shoot. One of the local folks I've shot with has a ton of obscure bolt action rifles, Chinese mausers, that kind of stuff.

To me it's a tool though, and while I appreciate people who preserve old things, these are made to be used. I wouldn't toss my nicely blued Tokarev in a pile of gravel, but it's not a safe queen either.

Assuming ammo is available (so that shooting is even possible), I can see two reasons not to shoot them.

1. Fragility. While the frame may be up to it, small parts will wear out, and are likely irreplaceable. Unless it is supported in the after-market parts industry, I can see keeping it as a wall-hanger.

2. Finish. If you have something that looks like it just came home from the shop and was made in 1892, do us all a favor and leave it that way. Shoot a more seasoned version.

Before purchasing an older weapon, I check to see if replacement springs are available. This is a good proxy to tell me if parts support is out there. In fact, I'm now to to the point where I replace the springs as a matter of procedure. It really does make a difference.

And I only buy stuff that has seen some decent use. I intend to shoot what I get, and I prefer something with wear marks and a scuffed finish. Before it was lost in Lake Huron, I did buy a minty Harrington and Richardson revolver from the 70s and immediately mar its finish through use, but I'm certain that its collector value was unaffected because it had no collector value. That's why I bought it. Crazy cheap.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Appendix carry is... I... it just gives me the heebie jeebies to hold the family jewels under the glare of John Moses Browning.

If it was anything BUT my 1911, I wouldn't do it. If it was my M&P, I carry at 7 or 9 o'clock (curse of being a lefty in the shooting hobby).

That's exactly what I did to decide between the Sig Manurhin and my saiga: I looked around the internet and phoned gunsmiths to ask if replacement parts were around. As it came out, I was detered from buying the Sig Manurhin because spare parts are so scarce.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
While the frame may be up to it, small parts will wear out, and are likely irreplaceable.

Depends on how much you're willing to pay I suppose. As long as you have an original to work from you can always measure the part, draw up blueprints, and send off a job to your local machine shop. It's probably not worth it unless you really love that gun but if people can "repair" old military aircraft from a serial number plate and a couple scraps of sheet metal the only thing stopping you is your budget.

TBH the parts I'd be more concerned about on a historical piece are the big ones. It's easy to overlook a replacement spring or tiny bit of metal but it's definitely going to feel bad if you have to choose between, say, replacing an original matching barrel with a modern one or having "minute of small house" accuracy. And of course that serial numbered receiver that carries the gun's legal status can be a real problem to fix or replace, especially if you've got a pre-ban gun in a place where you can't just buy or make a new one.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

To me it's a tool though, and while I appreciate people who preserve old things, these are made to be used. I wouldn't toss my nicely blued Tokarev in a pile of gravel, but it's not a safe queen either.

Assuming ammo is available (so that shooting is even possible), I can see two reasons not to shoot them. *snip excellent points - see above in comment thread for them*

A side note, the Shriv small arms collection which has stuff going back to the Brown Bess (2 of each, thought typically only 1 of each crew served example) where - barring a period where a very poorly thought out DIN was issued - they aimed to fire every weapon at least once a year (well not the crew served stuff). This was to ensure everything was in working order to make it a better reference collection. The police also used them a fair bit if they needed ballistics info. Anything which broke and couldn't be repaired was then shipped off to a museum. The were well used pieces though, they weren't trying to preserve finish, but keep them going for work purposes. The greatest threat to them was in fact dumb students cocking the weapons then putting them back on the racks, which had in the past ruined the springs. They have multiple weapons there that have been continuously used now for over a century. Some firearms really are rather tough.

One odd side effect of that was every weapon was pretty much zero'd for 25m as that was the range they had regular access to!

It may also come down to what someone’s hobby is.

Compare to vintage Star Wars.

Some just want any example of the figure, without or without accessories.

Some want to complete figures. Some with genuine accessories, others don’t mind repro

Some only want to buy complete figures, with varying tolerance of condition

Some want to buy Mint On Card - seeing it as an overall preservation effort.

I could never find them until now for my SVT40, but I like having accessories along with the gun. Strangely enough I'm not upset if they're reprimoduction - I'll take into account how rare genuine ones are sometimes.

I've got the bayonet, the sling, and the cleaning kit plus 2 copies of clips for my mosin nagant. The cleaning kit hadn't got the correct oil bottle but I got lucky.

My mosin fell once when my brother pushed it by negligence. So the upper wood piece broke and I bought a replacement one. I had the pleasing surprise of noticing something at the bottom of the packages, turned out, it was the actual oil bottle with Cyrillic letters and both compartments!

For my SVT40, I've only found one reproduction of a sling. Otherwise, I still seek the tools that go alon with it: one to regulate gas piston and the other to zero the iron sights. Plus I'd like a second magazine.

I brought home my GSG 922 yesterday.
I've loaded the mags and I'm ready to attempt a zero.

First thoughts on the pistol. I'm not thrilled with the front site I may change it but it's early days.
I also need to find a holster for it. Nothing I have will work. The shop does make holsters and I may do that after payday as a carry over until I can sort this out.
You can see the rail it has and I'm not sure if I want to put anything on it or not yet. I should also say this pistol is heavier than the GSG 1911. I did not expect that.

Let us know how you felt after shooting it!

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Let us know how you felt after shooting it!

Sure thing!

First round I hit a few issues. Two magazines failed to feed, of 6. Issue two was user error my thumb placement on the slide, right thumb over the top of the safety along with my left thumb along forward along the slid both stopped the pistol from cycling correctly. I'm learning and adjusted My right thumb is back under the safety which works. It could just have been that my grip was too tight. And lastly, and this is annoying, the rear sight started to slide off the pistol out of the track it mounts too. the screw was not tight enough. I lost the plate that sits under it that the screw puts pressure on but there is a second one in the box along with more of the same sites and screws. Neither of the Hex Keys that came with it seem to correctly fit this screw. after correcting the issue I managed to get through two more magazines before it was a repeat issue with the rear site.
I will go back with a magnet to find the missing plate and locate a hex key that fits, I have a tool box full so there's a chance.

It's a mixed bag. When it's working I'm fairly pleased with it. Not zeroed to me, just a flat mechanical zero it was set at and that went well. Where I came up short I could walk it in, just a few more shots. I'm just shooting at cans out back and I can see the sand kick up.

I had thought that saying I may replace the sites as soon as I saw them and before I had fired this pistol sounded a little pretentious but I am leaning towards doing that now. I'll just find something that works that doesn't cost an arm and a leg along with maybe that holster I may need. Speaking of the holster, if I remove the rail I believe it will fit my small of the back holster and I plan to try that after I find the screw driver I need to use, again among my tools somewhere.

The weight doesn't feel bad and I only had one "click and no bang" only one bullet of the 6 magazines thus far. (80 rounds total. )That bullet did fire after I reset the hammer. As soon s I had a magazine issue I changed for a new one and set that one aside. I think I have two that are now working properly with the magazine conversion kits and I may just change them back. Something about how the bullets site in there is creating the issue.

I guess that's not bad for round one.

++Edit++

First time go on finding the hex key. It was the first one picked up.

++ Edit 2++
Found that tiny plate with a magnet. Huzzah, I still have all my parts.

You'll have to shoot some more and see if it gets better. Guns need "warming up". 22 isn't the most reliable round anyway on a semi auto anyway. Good thing you're already figuring out a bit though.

Mounting optics on a pistol is not necessarily the overkill people make it to be I think. If it feels either more confortable or of you get better results with it there's no reason to not do it.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
You'll have to shoot some more and see if it gets better. Guns need "warming up". 22 isn't the most reliable round anyway on a semi auto anyway. Good thing you're already figuring out a bit though.

Mounting optics on a pistol is not necessarily the overkill people make it to be I think. If it feels either more confortable or of you get better results with it there's no reason to not do it.

For sure. I have experienced the difference moving from Iron sites to 68"s on my M4 was a very nice change.
Overall I think things went well even with the small troubles thus far. A log way to go still. I mostly plink cans and targets but I've been shooting every week for a few months where as before it was just a few times a year. I don't know if I want a laser site or not yet. I had hoped to mount a strong light on the rail. I was mostly thinking to upgrade the iron sites it comes with. I have to read up on that to see just how much it would be worth it to spend and try to not over spend. But I don't know yet. I do want good night sites on what ever my larger caliber gun turns out to be. So I could buy them mount them and later move them as long as everything is compatible. It may sound silly but it would help me bring in what I want and not have to wait later, spending when I am a little light one month. I don't know defiantly need to do more reading.
On my user error, I think being lighter ammo s one reason I hit that snag early on and maybe in a higher caliber that issue goes away so maybe what I have learned simply isn't exactly applicable here.

Again I'm very happy I finally bought a gun, it was a bucket list thing and originally I was going to buy a 45 this year because I had just turned 45. It just seemed a little childish at the time having never fired a 45 before. That door is still open though.

Some blue Loctite should fix your screw problem. You'll want to use that if/when mounting optics as well. You can find it at most dept/hardware store.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
Depends on how much you're willing to pay I suppose. As long as you have an original to work from you can always measure the part, draw up blueprints, and send off a job to your local machine shop. It's probably not worth it unless you really love that gun but if people can "repair" old military aircraft from a serial number plate and a couple scraps of sheet metal the only thing stopping you is your budget.

That's exactly what I'm worried about: the cost.

If there are plentiful spares, I'll shoot with more frequency than if not.

Bit items like barrels are also a consideration, though I don't know that a casual shooter is going to cause much barrel wear on just speculative plinking. Generally, it takes competition-level practice sessions to really wear down the big parts.

Of course, one can buy a spare barrel, use that and just keep the original off to the side.

I will say that some weapons have enough support that one can practically build them out of spare parts.

Had the time to do a little more shooting today. It went well enough no major issues right away. Later part of my rear site would try to walk off way to the left but the site bosy stayed on which was the issue the other day. One step forward I guess.

I use coffee can lids for targets when I have them around.
These are two of three. The first 10 rounds were a struggle but I started to get over that on these two targets.





Over all I could confirm 14 hits to each target but I couldn't tell with one of the 15 rounds hit both times. That said things went well, no malfunctions of any kind at that time.
Just me still getting used to the pistol. I've adjusted my grip and am trying to stay consistent. I was standing about 7 paces away from the target board. I need to measure it out to a known distance. I have no idea how far away is right, maybe it doesn't matter. The only other thought on that is the further away I am the more difficult it will be to see the dot I place at the center of the target. Almost like the front site it too thick.

After that I lined up about 5 cans on a long and tried to plink them off. This did not go well, as I mentioned the rear site issue. Once I got it corrected, field expedient, Things worked out. I did have one weird double feed but again that was a user error. I replace the magazine and it wasn't seated all the way so it wouldn't feed then it did feed but I don't now. Some how I managed to eject two rounds. No problems after that.
That's another 80 rounds thought the pistol. It's getting there.

Nice, I'll be stealing that coffee lid idea if you don't mind.

I'm shooting this afternoon, think I'll go for my mosin at 200m.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Nice, I'll be stealing that coffee lid idea if you don't mind.

I'm shooting this afternoon, think I'll go for my mosin at 200m.

We drink a fair bit of coffee so I ended up with maybe 10 or 12 list this year. After those I might move to paper plates if I want a quick target to shoot at.
I do like the easy to see yellow of the coffee can lids I have though. I know there are better targets out there but I'm not in a position now where those would be something I would have on hand on a regular basis.

 warhead01 wrote:

I was standing about 7 paces away from the target board. I need to measure it out to a known distance. I have no idea how far away is right, maybe it doesn't matter.

We stuck some PVC pipe in the ground and made distance markers that fit into them. You can see the 3 meter, the 5 is rotated in the picture. Have 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 25 and 50 marked. Helps a lot when doing drills.

Nice range!

SO, shot decently but my gun's front sight started sliding again! I'll have to fix that. Part of why the gun was so cheap when I got it, bolt hasn',t got the same serial number and frontsights waffle around. But hey, it's my first gun and I love it anyway. Plus, it keeps shooting good nonetheless!

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Nice range!

Thanks, side with hanging 'bottles' is .22/rimfire only, other side handles pretty much anything, though 7.62 NATO tends to leave a mark.

Not visible are two plywood 'barricades' with various cut outs to force shooting in uncomfortable positions. Have also added a couple targets since this picture was taken.

Don't have the right saw for the job but I am intent on building a plinking barricade with holes for that as well! For now it'll be used with either my revolver or my auto 5

So what sort of target would one use for shotguns? Particularly if you’re practicing for hunting fowl in woods, where clay pigeons wouldn’t seem practical to my idiot mind.

The equivalent of "sighting in" a shotgun is patterning it. Adjusting the choke/lack thereof and seeing what sort of pattern it creates. This is done just by shooting at a large surface(like a big piece of cardboard) and seeing what the spread is at various distances.

Clay pigeons are useful because they help you practice shooting a moving target. Pigeons and quail are fast buggers so the biggest thing you are training is reaction time.

I’m genuinely confused. Would the pattern not depend more on the ammo, and how the pellets are sitting in each….cartridge? Round? Dunno what the proper name is. Slug maybe?

That is a variable. But the Choke also has a lot to do with it.

Chokes are small inserts that screw into the end and inside of the barrel. If you imagine how pipe threads work. Most guns have Male threads(threads on the outside). Shotguns have female threads(threads on the inside). They can constrict or expand the tube to effect the pellets as they leave. Imagine like putting your finger over the end of a hose(though not that extreme).

Ok proper Dakkanauts, and this includes service personnel both current and retired….

What’s the best thing you’ve ever shot, or played with?

In my incredibly limited experience? Genuine World War One Vicker’s .303 Machine Gun.

How did this singular idiot get his grubby mitts on that? School visit to the Imperial War Museum. I was pretty young, certainly…now that was Year 9, so around 13, maybe 14. Which was the age some went off to fight, having lied on their sign up.

I was picked from the class to get dressed up in the uniform (scratchy. Very very scratchy), and got to play with the era appropriate guns. SMLE was a hefty bit of kit, and my weedy muscles really struggled to work the action. And of course…the Vicker’s. Now naturally being a room full of idiots and Britain, I only got to work the mechanism, but even so it was a very cool experience. Sat cross legged behind this shooter older than my Grandparents (I think? I mean, most probably). Reaching forward, one hand on the grip, to pull the cocking lever*, feeling it cycle. Then both hands on the grip. Index fingers pulling the safety…then thumbs pressing down the trigger.

It felt….powerful. And really user friendly. Even though of course if shooting guns was having a sandwich, this was no closer to enjoying the full experience than licking the packaging.

Maybe one day I can complete that experience. Even if it’s just firing blanks.

But yeah, that’s my favourite!

Does 120mm MBT main gun count?

Most biggest boom that is a ''gun'' 84mm Carl-G

Context in which I had the most fun? Practising door breaching with a Remington 870. In a similar vein, that, but with breaching charges.

The gun I'd like to shoot again, or use more, however, is the H&K MR 308, that was fun.

12-bore double-barrelled shotgun (side-by-side, not over-under) at clays. I've enjoyed shooting rifles but there is something especially satisfying about a double-barrelled shotgun that I can't put my finger on. Dunno why, but the over-unders don't do it for me either.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Does 120mm MBT main gun count?

If you giggled, even if only internally? Yes!

Even if you didn’t giggle because it was serious worky business, then still yes.

Just training, so I did giggle a lot!

Fired a ton of 120mm, loved it. But I have a special place in my heart for a flex mounted .50 That hammering is just awesome, and watching out tear crap up is just so cool.

I think the old Dragon ATGM was fun too, that POP POP POP POP as the guidance rockets kick off is pretty neat.

I got to fire both the M249 and the M60, which it was (sort of) replacing.

The M60 was impressive. I get why you need an AG to spot you, because even with a 'geek strap' my glasses were wobbling big time.

My greatest regret was not cashing in my chits on a drug deal with the Security Forces Squadron. I'd written them up to look like Audie Murphy, and their commander was glowing with satisfaction. I was supposed to cover their live-fire exercise and then some stupid grip 'n grin thing came up, and I "took one for the team" and backed out. I still remember the SFS commander offering to pull rank on my butterbar, going up the Wing king to demand my personal presence at his exercise. I felt (falsely) that my self-sacrifice would be rewarded. I've had many missed chances turn into something better, but that wasn't one of them.

Original SA80A1. Truly, truly awful. I have no idea how this was made to work in gulf 1. Admittedly the one I had was old on top of everything else, but still. After three magazines and at least one problem every two dozen rounds it suffered a malfunction requiring it to go back to the armourer as a round got jammed after the firing pin had hit it but it didn't fire. The Captain on the range had a look best described as horror as I peered about inside and quickly took possession of the rifle.

Why was it the best thing? Was a fantastic living example of pretty much every part of the procurement cycle failing and the institutions behind it not caring, and brought a lot of lessons into sharp focus. Its the type of info/insight I love watching forgotten weapons for.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Why was it the best thing? Was a fantastic living example of pretty much every part of the procurement cycle failing and the institutions behind it not caring, and brought a lot of lessons into sharp focus. Its the type of info/insight I love watching forgotten weapons for.

The issue I have with Forgotten Weapons is that Ian comments like an expert on military weapons without the tedious first-hand knowledge of what goes into that. His weird attempt to rehabilitate the Chauchat is a great example of not understanding the difference between an afternoon at the range and day after day in a trench. Even a relative tourist like myself can understand why the whole "jams when gets hot, don't shoot to0 fast" thing is a deal-breaker for an LMG. Spending a couple of days running around the back country on a stateside base is in no way comparable to trench warfare, but it's a heck of a lot more demanding than taking your meticulously oiled, cleaned, and pampered weapon to the range for an afternoon and pronouncing it reliable.

Before my time with the Army, I somewhat believed that the Stoner platform was flawed, but after "living the lifestyle," I've tremendous confidence in it.

Subsequent arms contracts bears that out. In the 80s, the bullpup was the weapon of the future, but they're slowly fading away. Having the magazine well in front of the trigger guard is just really convenient.

Counter point?

For a completely ignorant prick like myself? Forgotten Weapons is super accessible. It’s a base level of knowledge verging on medium. And even when conclusions are challenged as in your post, Good Sir? I’ve learned enough to understand your challenge, and from there go on to further (but still surface, I’m not gonna claim watching YouTube make you an expert in anything) learning and that.

I am confidant in saying that Ian most definitely is an expert on military weapons. He can still get stuff wrong, but I am pretty sure he took those into account in his assessment of the Chauchat(If I am remembering the specific video correctly).

Keep in mind that what an LMG is "supposed to do" has radically changed from when the Chauchat was designed and what we today want them to do.

The Chauchat was designed for Walking Fire like the BAR. Today we want LMGs to dump hundreds of rounds repeatedly in suppressing fire, but at the time that would have been unthinkable. LMGs at the time were conceptually more like Heavy SMGs. Sporadic bursts of aimed fire to suppress the enemy while advancing and at close range dumping bursts for actual killing. They're not made to dump tons of ammo towards enemy trenches to suppress large areas(thats what the Maxim guns are for!).

It was really a good idea of gun, mired down by there being a couple of bad parts to it and of course the main culprit. That being its misfortune of being used by... The French.

You could go back in time to the 1860s or 1910 and give the French the ability to manufacture LeMAS rifles and they'd still manage to do horribly.

Of course it was the worst gun you could want in Trench warfare as well. But nobody had any idea that that was coming. Everyone still thought maneuver warfare would still be the thing.

An honest to gods HK G3. I was 17, my uncle acquired it somehow. The thing was ejecting brass so hard they were chipping the plexi between lanes. I've had a HK 91(civilian-approved version) on my wishlist for a very long time.

Most of the times french weapon manufacturers came up with very good ideas and designs and then the army and parliament dismembered them by adding hundreds of cost savings or aloof demands. After all, we invented somkeless powder, modern turreted tanks, metal cartridges in the Gras, and a lot of other stuff I forget or don't think of.

I've seen another MAS36 for example that was not used despite being of first type. The main difference I noticed was the bayonet made to sabotage the guns by sticking two together and the front sight. I wish I had got my own MAS instead of borrowing !

Anyway, many MAS weren't issued at all, and prototypes of semi auto in ww1 were never issued, because "we've got spare 8mm Level and your gun doesn't use it so get back to the bench please".

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
The issue I have with Forgotten Weapons is that Ian comments like an expert on military weapons without the tedious first-hand knowledge of what goes into that. His weird attempt to rehabilitate the Chauchat is a great example of not understanding the difference between an afternoon at the range and day after day in a trench. Even a relative tourist like myself can understand why the whole "jams when gets hot, don't shoot to0 fast" thing is a deal-breaker for an LMG. Spending a couple of days running around the back country on a stateside base is in no way comparable to trench warfare, but it's a heck of a lot more demanding than taking your meticulously oiled, cleaned, and pampered weapon to the range for an afternoon and pronouncing it reliable.

I take it for what he can offer as someone doing the background reading for me as it were. I love the background on the procurement, the politics of the time, the observations users of the day had and any neat observations where the mechanics have deviated from the norms of the time, or differences with other platforms. Where he is giving his opinions on how it fires they are just that (and I tend to skip the videos from the range unless someone has told me I should view one) - but even there for me it is instructional because I have to deal with people like that in a variety of fields and its great to have that constant reminder that confidence and good knowledge in other areas doesn't mean they get credibility elsewhere. When you have had to sit and mediate a discussion between an engineering officer upset about his guys suffering pretty awful leg wounds because they are stuffing mouseholing gear in their thigh pockets, the development guys trying to explain about the system and the doctrine writer arguing everyone is doing it wrong, you can appreciate such reminders

(Though don't get me started on a scheme Islamic Relief had to teach people in target areas how to be proper Muslims that some colleagues from other organisations thought was a wonderful idea and we should fund it.)

Before my time with the Army, I somewhat believed that the Stoner platform was flawed, but after "living the lifestyle," I've tremendous confidence in it.

Subsequent arms contracts bears that out. In the 80s, the bullpup was the weapon of the future, but they're slowly fading away. Having the magazine well in front of the trigger guard is just really convenient.

I think alongside that you have increased convergence on the role of a rifleman within the wider system. I am frankly amazed the UK is starting to adopt the KS-1/L403A1 having sat through innumerable lectures and sermons from the great and the good about the rifleman concept in the British army and why that precluded options like the m4 (I am also amazed its a drip drip of changes happening in various places because replacing all the associated stuff from armourers stores and training to secure stowage points in trucks is going to be problematic with two platforms in service). But it shows western countries at least seem to be coming to closer and closer accord to what they want their soldiers to do.

The background of any collectible military rifle is indeed an important factor to decide whether you I would buy it or not.

My favorite ones are by far russian (having learned russian to a very solid level and liking the country and its culture a lot) and french (because I'm very interested in my country's history). Even though of course, while their my go-to choices, if I could afford a nice american, israeli, whatever weapon, I wouldn't be upset doing so at all!

After all, I didn't only buy my Auto 5 because it was a good bargain, but because I was interested in this piece of history with great fascinating design and long and various service!

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:His weird attempt to rehabilitate the Chauchat is a great example of not understanding the difference between an afternoon at the range and day after day in a trench. Even a relative tourist like myself can understand why the whole "jams when gets hot, don't shoot to0 fast" thing is a deal-breaker for an LMG. Spending a couple of days running around the back country on a stateside base is in no way comparable to trench warfare, but it's a heck of a lot more demanding than taking your meticulously oiled, cleaned, and pampered weapon to the range for an afternoon and pronouncing it reliable.

Having formerly worked in small arms testing and evaluation, I find the mythos around the Chauchat absolutely fascinating. I don't take McCollum's range experience as anything more than range-toy-testing and I have no personal experience with trench warfare, but I notice when the opinions of those who used a weapon in combat contrasts with the prevailing public opinion.

First-hand accounts of the original 8mm Lebel examples in French, Belgian, and partisan use were generally positive, and its reliability under combat conditions does not appear to have been noticeably worse than its peers. There were substantiated problems with parts compatibility and magazine quality, but the modern criticisms usually focus on details that do not appear to have been actual problems in use, or vulnerabilities to trench conditions that were fairly universal and caused serious problems even for guns that are typically regarded as reliable (eg Maxim/Vickers guns experiencing stoppages due to moisture-induced swelling of the cotton duck belts).

 Grey Templar wrote:
The Chauchat was designed for Walking Fire like the BAR. Today we want LMGs to dump hundreds of rounds repeatedly in suppressing fire, but at the time that would have been unthinkable. LMGs at the time were conceptually more like Heavy SMGs. Sporadic bursts of aimed fire to suppress the enemy while advancing and at close range dumping bursts for actual killing. They're not made to dump tons of ammo towards enemy trenches to suppress large areas(thats what the Maxim guns are for!).

The French did use the Chauchat for sustained fire in defense, though, and it's worth noting that the thermal lock issue does not appear to have been a major problem in practice. The French Army conducted trials in 1916 that found lockup occurred at 300-400 rounds in continuous automatic fire, not a quick thing with 18rd magazines at a sedate 250RPM. And a survey issued to every infantry regiment in May 1917 yielded strong complaints about magazine fragility, but not overheating, and praised the weapon for its volume of fire in repelling German counterattacks on seized positions, when it had to do the job of heavier machine guns until they could be brought up.

For comparison: The Lewis gun is a lot closer in capabilities to what we would regard as a light machine gun, better able to sustain automatic fire and feeding from 47rd pan magazines. It also weighs close to 50% more, can't be effectively fired from the shoulder, and its magazines are completely uncovered on the bottom (and suffer from the same intrusion problems as the Chauchat mags), but it is generally regarded as an excellent weapon for the time. The British made about 15,000 of them during WW1, and issued one per platoon from 1917 onwards.

The Germans developed the MG08/15 conversion of their Maxim derivative. It's an awkward and ungainly attempt at turning a mounted MMG into a forty-pound LMG, suffering the same problems as other Maxims without the luxury of a carriage to keep out of the mud. They made 130,000 by the end of the war, and each infantry platoon of four squads carried two.

The French made over a quarter million Chauchats. By the end of the war the doctrinal French infantry platoon had a minimum of one Chauchat in every squad. No other nation came remotely close to the density of automatic weapons that the French achieved, and even with its reliability problems, 3+ Chauchats per platoon is a lot more lead going downrange than a single Lewis.

By all accounts it appears to be the Sten of WW1: A crude, suboptimal, but expedient weapon that fulfilled an immediate requirement and could be produced en-masse without occupying manufacturing capacity better suited to more sophisticated arms. The big difference is that the Chauchat is tethered to the albatross of a .30-06 conversion, which dominates English-speaking discourse around the weapon, and the combat ineffectiveness of that variant has been unfairly ascribed to the original.

Good post CatBarf. Always good to look at context and I think there is a lot to be said for the automatic weapon you have vs the theoretically better weapon you don't. As you say, the Sten is a great example.

Were Vickers gun stoppages due to moisture common? Some of the apocyphal stories of Vickers reliability are impressive. Is there a difference between Maxim guns and Vickers guns in this regard? (I know these are the same weapon mechanically, but the Vickers weapons were produced with very high grade materials with good machining, and cost a lot as a result).

 Haighus wrote:
Were Vickers gun stoppages due to moisture common? Some of the apocyphal stories of Vickers reliability are impressive. Is there a difference between Maxim guns and Vickers guns in this regard? (I know these are the same weapon mechanically, but the Vickers weapons were produced with very high grade materials with good machining, and cost a lot as a result).

With any gun using a cotton belt there were issues with humidity or water immersion causing the belt to swell, become loose, and drop the rounds. Or they would stretch to the point of impacting feed reliability, and result in an unusable belt. Or swell and then contract again, gripping the rounds too tightly to extract. This was enough of a problem that post-war pretty much every nation would start designing metallic belts, but the standard solution in WW1 was to keep the belts sealed in boxes whenever possible, and this seems to have worked well for the dugout emplacements in which the MGs were typically employed in the defense.

It's when the guns had to be brought up to improvised firing positions to reinforce newly-seized gains, or were pressed into LMG service (as in the LMG08/15), that this became an issue- if you're just sitting in the rain waiting for a counterattack, there's not much you can do to keep the loaded belt from getting wet. And while the Maxim/Vickers is an exceptionally reliable gun under clean conditions, mud on a belt will stop it up just as surely as mud in a Chauchat magazine or Lewis pan, and keeping a 250rd cotton belt from touching the ground while it's feeding into a gun hastily positioned on the edge of a fighting trench appears to have been challenging.

Basically it's worth keeping in mind that the manner in which a weapon is employed will have a substantial impact on its reliability in practice. There isn't a single automatic weapon of WW1 that functioned reliably when subjected to trench warfare conditions, so if you see an assessment single out a particular weapon as prone to stoppages from mud, take it with a grain of salt and compare to its contemporaries.

Both Maxim and Vickers guns are almost supernaturally reliable. Maxim guns are still being used today in various conflicts. The only real downside to a Maxim gun is they are chonky. The Vickers is basically a Maxim turned upside down and with some weight shaved off(though its still super heavy).

Is that down to a relatively simple design?

Simple design with very robust parts and a cooling system that allows for more or less continuous fire.

There have been multiple occasions where Maxim or Vickers guns were fired for multiple days on end. Some did require swaps of springs and of course changes of the water, but some didn't replace any parts at all.

IIRC there was a 1963 test where a Vickers gun was fired for 7 days straight. 5 million rounds or something.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is that down to a relatively simple design?

Not really. Like most of the influential turn-of-the-century designs it's significantly more complicated than its modern counterparts, and its recoil system was a technological dead-end.

It's reliable because it's ridiculously overbuilt (the gun alone weighs 60lbs), is designed for a low rate of fire, has easily swapped wear components, and has a water-cooling system that completely mitigates heat accumulation so long as water is available. It's also recoil-operated (being originally designed for black powder), so there's no gas system to clean out.

But if you want your machine gun package to be portable by an infantryman rather than an analogue for crewed artillery, you have to start making compromises.

 catbarf wrote:
The French made over a quarter million Chauchats. By the end of the war the doctrinal French infantry platoon had a minimum of one Chauchat in every squad. No other nation came remotely close to the density of automatic weapons that the French achieved, and even with its reliability problems, 3+ Chauchats per platoon is a lot more lead going downrange than a single Lewis.

Yeah, and how many of these did they keep in service afterwards? The Lewis and the BAR soldiered on, but even the hapless Balkan clients who were "gifted" them in 1919 desperately looked for something, anything else.

To be clear, I like Forgotten Weapons, have watched it for years, I just have to take it with a grain of salt, sometimes lots of grains.

It has been a useful resource for collecting, especially disassembly/reassembly.

One thing I think is weird about it is how many blind spots he has in his coverage. Presumably he cut a deal with C&Rsenal over what he would and would not cover. That channel is the cure for insomnia.

I don't think anybody is saying the Chauchat wasn't quickly obsolete. But it was a good invention for its time.

It's kind of the phenomenon with a lot of things that the first use/adopters of a new idea often don't fully benefit from it. France in general seems to have had this issue with a lot of things. Smokeless powder, mitrailleuse(first machine gun ever fielded arguably), etc...

 Grey Templar wrote:
I don't think anybody is saying the Chauchat wasn't quickly obsolete. But it was a good invention for its time.

It's kind of the phenomenon with a lot of things that the first use/adopters of a new idea often don't fully benefit from it. France in general seems to have had this issue with a lot of things. Smokeless powder, mitrailleuse(first machine gun ever fielded arguably), etc...

Ian put a lot of effort into rehabilitating it. I'm all about challenging the prevailing narratives and such, but even watching him try to set it up on a range with those gangly bipod legs, trying to work his body around it, and then seeing how easy and quick the Lewis could be deployed kind of gave the lie to the whole thing. The French used it because it was what they had. It was better than nothing.

But not by that much.

Forgotten Weapons has been very useful in doing research, and it's one of my go-to places because Ian often has guests on who know lots of things and that can lead you to more detailed information. He has provided original research and debunked some long-standing myths.

But he has flaws, and I think his biggest is that when he goes to range and does his LARP thing, he doesn't seem to grasp that actual troops wear the gear and carry the weapons so that they become an extension of themselves. (It's been 23 years, but my rifle's rack number was 109, dammit!)

He regularly seems to skimp on cleaning and maintenance that simply wouldn't be tolerated, and he does it in part because the exposure to the elements is almost always short-term.

TL;DR: he's good on the design/history, not so much on function/utility.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Yeah, and how many of these did they keep in service afterwards? The Lewis and the BAR soldiered on but even the hapless Balkan clients who were "gifted" them in 1919 desperately looked for something, anything else.

You could argue that the Sten was a terrible, irredeemable gun because it was immediately replaced after WW2 with the Sterling while the M3 remained in service, but you would not find it well-received among many historians.

In any case, the Chauchat was used by Belgium at the start of WW2, by Greece in 1940-41 against Italy, in reserve use in France during the Blitz, and by the Finns during the Continuation War. The Lewis had been replaced by the Bren at that point and remained only in Home Guard service, and the BAR was significantly altered just four years after introduction, redesigned into a light machine gun in the 1930s, and then failed in this role during WW2.

Very few designs remained intact in the interwar period, and even some of the ones that were successful in combat- most of the machine guns, the Luger and Mauser pistols and their stocked counterparts, the American Enfields- were soon replaced as both technology and doctrine advanced massively. It's no surprise that an interim, hastily adopted, expedient design was retired ASAP in favor of one that was both newer and more importantly not designed around a wholly obsolete cartridge, but that doesn't mean it was a failure in the capacity in which it was used.

I've critiqued Forgotten Weapons more than once myself. His repetition of that hoary old myth about the XM177 moderator being intended to make the weapon sound like an AK stands out, because it's directly contradicted by official documentation from Aberdeen. I prefer to rely on primary sources.

 catbarf wrote:
In any case, the Chauchat was used by Belgium at the start of WW2, by Greece in 1940-41 against Italy, in reserve use in France during the Blitz, and by the Finns during the Continuation War. The Lewis had been replaced by the Bren at that point and remained only in Home Guard service, and the BAR was significantly altered just four years after introduction, redesigned into a light machine gun in the 1930s, and then failed in this role during WW2.

Clearly I struck a sympathetic nerve.

The Lewis gun absolutely saw service outside the Home Guard in World War II. They're one of the iconic weapons of the LRDG. They were also used for light AA work on channel convoy ships. As for the BAR, it got product improved and for whatever reason remained in service.

The point is that Ian goes down rabbit holes and part of the reason for that is that he's never had to service a weapon day to day in the field. That's all I'm saying.

I do enjoy the show, but am a little annoyed that he's mostly hyping new-built weapons from the Balkans and Central Europe. I don't really care about the latest polymer 9 or bullpup, I want more vintage stuff.

Me again with another movie related question.

Currently watching Mad Max Fury Road with a houseguest.

And as has happened before to Max (at least in Mad Max 2), the shotgun shell, rather than firing, just sort of….fizzles. Like there’s a chemical reaction going on, but it is to a proper firing as a five day old kitten is to a Lion in its prime in terms of strength.

I think I’ve only seen such a thing in this movie series. And it’s got me wondering…..is it just a plot device, is it kind of a standard risk of all rounds, or perhaps a standard risk unique to shotgun cartridges?

Educate me, Dakka!!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think I’ve only seen such a thing in this movie series. And it’s got me wondering…..is it just a plot device, is it kind of a standard risk of all rounds, or perhaps a standard risk unique to shotgun cartridges?

Educate me, Dakka!!

The idea is that the cartridge has been compromised by moisture or something and therefore the powder produces less of a charge. Hence the "damp squib" reaction.

I've never seen it happen. Plastic ammo is pretty well sealed. Maybe the Aussies are still using paper casings, but I've seen people dig out vintage paper shells, dunk them in water, and they still go off.

Mad Max is an Aussie film series, and has Aussie sensibilities, one of which seems to be that ammunition is this strange, mysterious thing that is beyond the ken of mortal men. It's not. If you can supercharge an engine, you can machine firearms and make ammo for them. Lord Humongous in The Road Warrior uses a revolver to inflict mayhem, but revolvers don't eject their brass. So there's no reason he shouldn't be able to reload all his ammo. There's some chemistry involved, but it's not insurmountable. I've seen videos showing how to make homemade percussion caps with aluminum cans.

If nothing else, they could be using blackpowder cartridges - and probably would.

I've seen a few squibs with shotshells. It usually has to do with bad powder (moisture intrusion before loading- sometimes happens to commercial ammo during panic manufacturing and ensuing QC dips), or paper cartridges absorbing moisture over time. But it manifests as either a squib with the load staying stuck in the barrel, or firing with very low velocity. No dramatic Hollywood fizzle, though it can make a funny 'bloop' sound.

Anyways, lack of primitive guns or ammo is kind of a staple trope in post-apocalyptic fiction at this point, isn't it? It's all either baseball bats and crossbows or modern firearms, but a conspicuous lack of even ye olde black powder blunderbuss full of nails, which you'd think would give your average rugby padded raider some pause. Even the franchises that are more gun-heavy like Fallout and Metro tend to have bizarrely overengineered 'improvised' guns that don't differ much from professionally-made firearms in function.

You can make black powder with a medieval-level tech base. Gasoline and engine components, not so much.

so now we're on bogaloo loadouts ?

TFB TV's show on this was awesome.

As far as post apocalipitc settingd are concerned, I am a Stalker fan at the exclusion of all others because even Metro doesn't hook me the same.

Plenty of modern guns along with a few hunting ones. Anomaly cranked it a bit further up. Anyway i know myself and will refrain from going on a "why I love stalker" tangent.

I hate overingeneered "crude" weapons having better dakka than an AUG or AK.

To be fair, gunpowder is hard to make. You don't need a high tech level, but you do need skill and knowledge and sources of the raw ingredients.

Where is post-Apocalyptic Australia going to get the saltpetre and sulphur? Can they produce pure enough charcoal that the gunpowder actually functions as a low explosive? Are there even trees available to make charcoal from, or maybe high quality coal? Get any of this wrong and your guns won't work well enough to be worth the effort.

On top of this, if you are producing good powder it is pretty dangerous stuff and might blow up during manufacture.

The medieval world was pretty well developed and had industry and complex societies producing gunpowder.

Hold on Haighus. I feel the need for clarification.

Is gunpowder hard to make with no understanding of the basic concept.

And if you have that, is it tricky to make reliable gun or black powder?

Again I’m waltzing in with my ignorance, so no ‘Gotcha’ pending from me. Nor I’d hope any other participant in this thread!

 Haighus wrote:
To be fair, gunpowder is hard to make. You don't need a high tech level, but you do need skill and knowledge and sources of the raw ingredients.

Where is post-Apocalyptic Australia going to get the saltpetre and sulphur? Can they produce pure enough charcoal that the gunpowder actually functions as a low explosive? Are there even trees available to make charcoal from, or maybe high quality coal? Get any of this wrong and your guns won't work well enough to be worth the effort.

On top of this, if you are producing good powder it is pretty dangerous stuff and might blow up during manufacture.

The medieval world was pretty well developed and had industry and complex societies producing gunpowder.

Salpeter is "easy" if you got enough humans/animals and water.

Sulphur is the 5th most common element on this planet.

And the aussies have coal reserves.

Getting the mix right now that....yeah


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hold on Haighus. I feel the need for clarification.

Is gunpowder hard to make with no understanding of the basic concept.

And if you have that, is it tricky to make reliable gun or black powder?

Again I’m waltzing in with my ignorance, so no ‘Gotcha’ pending from me. Nor I’d hope any other participant in this thread!

Considering we did it as a species what 800-900 years now, in an era that would Make the average chemistry class look like the pinacle of knowledge? No not particulary difficult. Using comparativly abundand ressources Like well, literal gak.

But quality controll would certainly regress a bit especially when energy for instruments would become scarce.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
To be fair, gunpowder is hard to make. You don't need a high tech level, but you do need skill and knowledge and sources of the raw ingredients.

Where is post-Apocalyptic Australia going to get the saltpetre and sulphur? Can they produce pure enough charcoal that the gunpowder actually functions as a low explosive? Are there even trees available to make charcoal from, or maybe high quality coal? Get any of this wrong and your guns won't work well enough to be worth the effort.

On top of this, if you are producing good powder it is pretty dangerous stuff and might blow up during manufacture.

The medieval world was pretty well developed and had industry and complex societies producing gunpowder.

Salpeter is "easy" if you got enough humans/animals and water.

Sulphur is the 5th most common element on this planet.

And the aussies have coal reserves.

Getting the mix right now that....yeah

Right... but do you know how to extract saltpetre from refuse? IIRC most manure is low yield too, with bat guano being particularly favoured. Or maybe you know other ways of creating saltpetre from readily available reagents?

Do you know where to find or extract the sulphur?

Do you know how to make good, high quality charcoal? Coal is apparently not great for gunpowder and the types found in Australia are probably not the best types. Plus your post-Apocalyptic society has to mine the stuff.

There are people who know how to do the above, but they need to be in your group of survivors and you need to have access to the right raw materials to capitalise on it (like having a forest nearby).

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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hold on Haighus. I feel the need for clarification.

Is gunpowder hard to make with no understanding of the basic concept.

And if you have that, is it tricky to make reliable gun or black powder?

Again I’m waltzing in with my ignorance, so no ‘Gotcha’ pending from me. Nor I’d hope any other participant in this thread!

Considering we did it as a species what 800-900 years now, in an era that would Make the average chemistry class look like the pinacle of knowledge? No not particulary difficult. Using comparativly abundand ressources Like well, literal gak.

But quality controll would certainly regress a bit especially when energy for instruments would become scarce.

Eh, chemistry has improved a lot, but people were not dumb 800 years ago and a lot was determined via trial and error. Gunpowder was a strategic resource for complex societies with wide-reaching trade networks. I.e not post-Apocalyptic collapse of society into small nomadic tribes.

modern firearms don't use black powder and most modern firearms won't work if the shells are filled with black powder, specially of the wrong grain size and mixture (going back to single shot again, making an assault rifle work is going to be tricky)
making something that explodes is easy if you know what you are doing, making a reliable gunpowder that works for small arms is not
and the hardest part of making a modern gun work is not the powder but the primer (nice that you can make black powder and fill the shotgun cartridge but can you make the primer and the percussion cap?)

in addition, black powder weapons have a "fail" rate of ~25%, which was one of the main reasons why the blocked formations came up (to get reliable shots out and the more people together shooting at the same time at the same target the lesser the chance that all fail at the same time)

French elderly remembers the time when they used to make powder themselves. It often ended poorly. My grandfather has got a fair few histories of old timers getting burnt badly after tinkering to much, or a fair few guns that dislocated with that one too many shot... I would not play around with this.

Bad hand reloaded ammo are already dangerous enough, if you add in homemade powder... meh.

This would go against safety.

i don't think in a post apocalypse setting safety is anything you will have anyways depending upon how far collapsed society is...

Then again the nomadic apocalyptic settings doesn't make much sense either. Not since the agricultural revolution.

from a different genre, military grade ammunition becoming the currency in post-apo world
you can use it to shoot, as it is more reliable and will do more damage but it is rare enough and not easily made so you can use it for trade

Not Online!!! wrote:
i don't think in a post apocalypse setting safety is anything you will have anyways depending upon how far collapsed society is...

Then again the nomadic apocalyptic settings doesn't make much sense either. Not since the agricultural revolution.

Depends on the setting and the reason for the apocalypse IMO. Big chunks of Australia do not lend themselves to agriculture without modern industrial processes, and this may be a larger proportion due to whatever killed society. Hunter-gatherer or pastoral lifestyles might be the only viable option outside of some prime territory.

I still think safety is important. If making gunpowder is hard, making it is dangerous, using it is dangerous, and the weapons produced are unreliable or ineffective, groups will make other weapons instead that don't maim their users and manufacturers as much whilst still killing. Javelins, slings, darts, bows can be much easier to produce at a low tech level (although good bows require a lot of skill and access to good wood) and still plenty killy. Shields would probably make a comeback.


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 kodos wrote:
from a different genre, military grade ammunition becoming the currency in post-apo world
you can use it to shoot, as it is more reliable and will do more damage but it is rare enough and not easily made so you can use it for trade

This makes a lot of sense. Functioning firearms and ammo from before the apocalypse would be very valuable.

Not Online!!! wrote:
i don't think in a post apocalypse setting safety is anything you will have anyways depending upon how far collapsed society is...

Then again the nomadic apocalyptic settings doesn't make much sense either. Not since the agricultural revolution.

It's true they don't quite make sense on the whole probably. However if everyone around me and their dog plus fauna and atmosphere all want me dead, I'll probably try not to put myself at yet another risk.

The contrast I'm drawing is that Mad Max has the tech level to create high-end internal combustion engines and somehow drag-race caliber booster fuel, but is reduced to using crossbows.

Oh, and they know how to extract methane from pig excrement and burn it to create electricity

So the tech level of machining and chemistry would be there, and any warlord worthy of the name would have had his boys spending less time on ludicrous Noise Marine wagons and more time in reloading brass and milling the parts for rudimentary submachineguns.

It's worth noting that the first generation of cased ammo used black powder, and it was refined to a good degree at that time. The issue of fouling was still there, which is why it had to be manually cycled. Automatic operation could only happen with cleaner smokeless powder.

Basically, Old West level tech would not be that difficult to sustain. I mean if they can drill oil, refine it to high-octane gasoline and build superchargers, a Sten gun is within reach.

Disagree here, as there is a difference between technology being available and the need if machine tooling industry to manufacture something

like rifled guns, breach loading and metal cartridges existed for several 100 years yet what made the difference was the percussion primer and it took another 80 years from finding the chemical compound that worked well to making modern metal cartridges in industrial scale with the stop gap of the Minie/Lorenz bullet making rifled guns the norm
something that might have an effect on such post-apo developments as well, as a muzzle loader is much easier to make and to maintain but to get a rifled muzzle loader to work like modern arms a special bullet design is necessary

(as a fun fact, Austrian military used the percussion tube for several years as a stop gap to the percussion cap simply because they needed to build the industry for those first and meanwhile they converted flintlocks to use rolled up copper tubes with percussion primer)

with technology available but industry is not, things change and weapon one can make the ammunition easily on his own would replace the current modern stock very fast as the weapon itself is less important than the supply of ammunition

as why going the complicated why of creating the machinery to produce cartridges and percussion caps when an airgun is doing the same job
a bow or crossbow having the big advantage that you can recover your ammunition or have a constant supply if the opponent is using them too (like in historic warfare, if only one side had archers, they were of limited use because they run out of arrows quickly with no one shooting them back)

I've never read that archers had to salvage the arrows shot at them mid-battle in order to keep fighting. That sounds like nonsense.

As for why you would go to all the trouble of developing primitive firearms if you have bows and crossbows- because even a 1500s-era smoothbore arquebus has longer range, greater accuracy, massively better killing power and armor penetration (very relevant if your targets ride around in steel-skinned vehicles), and is less tiring to employ and less reliant on the physical condition of the wielder. And if you have the industrial base to maintain internal combustion engines and the chemistry know-how to produce the complex (and perishable) fuel they need, you can do a lot better than 1500s-level arquebuses, like Commissar said.

But even leaving aside firearms entirely, even if you have absolutely no ability to manufacture low explosives of any sort, there's a lot you can do with just the tech and knowledge base involved in automobiles. If you can form and weld steel you can easily make a pressure vessel for an airgun and cast lead projectiles- the Girardoni air rifle was a thirty-shot semi-automatic capable of killing at over a hundred yards, and that was done with brazed iron circa the late 1700s. Or since you already have fuel, you can make flamethrowers, and with a thickener it's less ten-foot-range Hollywood flamethrower and more hundred-yard napalm dispenser perfect for cleaning out those pesky open-topped vehicles and leaving salvageable hulls behind. A terrestrial Zippo Monitor would rule the desert.

Basically it's just difficult to reconcile having the ability to maintain complex and logistically intensive 20th-century machinery with only being able to produce medieval weaponry, and thus having to climb out of your car to whack the other guy with a baseball bat.


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Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
The issue of fouling was still there, which is why it had to be manually cycled. Automatic operation could only happen with cleaner smokeless powder.

FWIW Maxim's original machine gun prototypes were extensively demonstrated in 1884 using black powder. He held a number of patents on systems intended to reduce fouling, which was seen as an issue for sustained fire but not a complete showstopper.

 catbarf wrote:
I've never read that archers had to salvage the arrows shot at them mid-battle in order to keep fighting. That sounds like nonsense.

I have also not heard of this being a significant factor in battles. Plenty of famous engagements involving archers do not have equivalent weapons in use on both sides where ammunition could be loosed back.

Basically it's just difficult to reconcile having the ability to maintain complex and logistically intensive 20th-century machinery with only being able to produce medieval weaponry, and thus having to climb out of your car to whack the other guy with a baseball bat.

This is a fair point. I don't think most folks realise that fuel is a perishable though, which is probably part of the issue. You could scavenge usable car parts in arid climates for decades if the population drop was suitably massive, but fuel would be very scarce. This wouldn't be quite so much of an issue if we hadn't already extracted all the easy oil.

I think producing ethanol from biofuel would be doable with a poor technology base (distilling spirits is not the most complicated process). The issue is you need crops to farm and significant fixed infrastructure to defend if you want to produce a reasonable amount of fuel. That is flat inconsistent with being tech nomads unless they constantly raid or trade it from some sedentary neighbours.

Edit: a society based around air rifles would be really cool. I think they are a great example of a tech that is not that hard to produce if you have the knowledge. They could probably have made late medieval/renaissance air rifles if someone had thought of the idea.

 catbarf wrote:
I've never read that archers had to salvage the arrows shot at them mid-battle in order to keep fighting. That sounds like nonsense.

should read about the battle of hastings

 catbarf wrote:

As for why you would go to all the trouble of developing primitive firearms if you have bows and crossbows- because even a 1500s-era smoothbore arquebus has longer range, greater accuracy, massively better killing power and armor penetration (very relevant if your targets ride around in steel-skinned vehicles), and is less tiring to employ and less reliant on the physical condition of the wielder.

Hollywood history, even in 1800 a bow would be superior
the only reason why black powder weapons replaced bows was simply that it took years to get military trained archers, but weeks for musketeers

in a post-apo setting were you don't have armies clashing but skirmies and time to train (as you also need a hunting weapon) a bow is the better option for several reasons
and for complex fuel, you won't have the industrial base to do that, as is one theme of the MadMax setting, that the access to high quality fuel is limited and if you have the industrial base for complex fuel, you don't have a post-apo setting but the early 20th century

If you can form and weld steel you can easily make a pressure vessel for an airgun

which I wrote above, with the knowledge available and limited industrial base, airguns or other weapons that don't have complex ammunition are much more likely.
(hence the comparison with the percussion tube, that was used as stop gap until austria had the base to produce percussion caps, it was much easier to convert flintlocks into rifles to use the percussion tube than to build the industry for percussion caps)
so building a gun is easy, get the ammunition is the hard part and any weapon that reduces the work needed for ammunition (or has reusable ammunition) will take over as soon as old stock runs out

it is just that not many post-apocalyptic or low industry (with high tech knowledge) settings have picked that option up although it is a logical choice as even without engines to get compressed air,

 kodos wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I've never read that archers had to salvage the arrows shot at them mid-battle in order to keep fighting. That sounds like nonsense.

should read about the battle of hastings

I have never heard of a significant number of archers being on the English side in this battle, so who is loosing arrows back at the Normans?

 catbarf wrote:

As for why you would go to all the trouble of developing primitive firearms if you have bows and crossbows- because even a 1500s-era smoothbore arquebus has longer range, greater accuracy, massively better killing power and armor penetration (very relevant if your targets ride around in steel-skinned vehicles), and is less tiring to employ and less reliant on the physical condition of the wielder.

Hollywood history, even in 1800 a bow would be superior
the only reason why black powder weapons replaced bows was simply that it took years to get military trained archers, but weeks for musketeers

in a post-apo setting were you don't have armies clashing but skirmies and time to train (as you also need a hunting weapon) a bow is the better option for several reasons
and for complex fuel, you won't have the industrial base to do that, as is one theme of the MadMax setting, that the access to high quality fuel is limited and if you have the industrial base for complex fuel, you don't have a post-apo setting but the early 20th century

This is something of a myth, or a distortion at least. Training is only part of the story, but hitting power is also only part of the story.

Yes, a 15th or 16th century longbowmen is longer ranged and faster firing than a Napoleonic musketeer. At this point, almost no soldiers are wearing armour so the only factor in army composition is socioeconomic reasons that dictate a large number of musketeers is cheaper and quicker than a smaller number of archers. But that ignores how they got there.

A 16th century musketeer could have an effective range longer than a longbow or crossbow. There are examples of muskets hitting out and killing armoured opponents at 100 or even 200 yards. A bow wasn't penetrating period armour at those ranges with any reliability. However, a 16th century musketeer was also generally a highly-skilled soldier who loaded their weapon much more carefully than the later archetype. Early muskets are also much larger and heavier and really light support weapons (these are the weapons with the barrel rests) and existed alongside arquebuses as the lighter infantry firearm that was much shorter ranged and much worse at penetrating armour. Again, though, arquebusiers were also usually highly skilled troops that knew their weapons well. That was the late medieval/renaissance paradigm- relatively small, elite armies. In this context, guns were used (alongside bows) because they offered something bows couldn't- stopping power and long range.

Socioeconomic changes increased the size of armies and destroyed the systems that allowed smaller numbers of elite troops to be economically and socially sustainable, and armour and bows and precision use of early firearms basically ceased to exist on the battlefield.

So in the context of armour (in this case cars) muskets are going to be better if available to those experienced in their use, although using both is probably superior.

On arrow recovery? I suspect it was used as a source of extra, but not something you’d exactly rely on.

Salvaging after the battle? Yeah, I can see that, if only to recover the heads and possibly flights, with the shafts only being reused in extremis, due to the stresses being shot puts on them.

 Haighus wrote:
I have never heard of a significant number of archers being on the English side in this battle, so who is loosing arrows back at the Normans?

that is the point?
that the norman archers were of limited use as they run out of arrows quickly because there were not many englisch archers shooting back

A 16th century musketeer could have an effective range longer than a longbow or crossbow. There are examples of muskets hitting out and killing armoured opponents at 100 or even 200 yards. A bow wasn't penetrating period armour at those ranges with any reliability. However, a 16th century musketeer was also generally a highly-skilled soldier who loaded their weapon much more carefully than the later archetype. Early muskets are also much larger and heavier and really light support weapons (these are the weapons with the barrel rests) and existed alongside arquebuses as the lighter infantry firearm that was much shorter ranged and much worse at penetrating armour. Again, though, arquebusiers were also usually highly skilled troops that knew their weapons well. That was the late medieval/renaissance paradigm- relatively small, elite armies. In this context, guns were used (alongside bows) because they offered something bows couldn't- stopping power and long range.

pretty much, yes but in addition this also caused armour to become better and saw the renaissance of heavy shields for infantry
as heavy plate armour and shields were designed to withstand the heavy bullets in the 17th century, which also caused the shift to lighter weapons with higher rate of fire instead of penetration as of the opponent could get into close range before you reloaded, you got a problem (and the Swedish Army was successful with fast melee units charging for a while)

so going back to the post-apo setting and like what can you make from the stuff you have at home or available in your town
outside of stock that will be gone sooner than later, can you make ammunition for an assault rifle, can you make black powder, can you make an air gun and can you make a bow and arrows?

The same archers that very famously were important in the final stages of the battle when the shield wall broke? Apocryphally even killing the English leader (although probably not)? I am not sure if that is a great example.

Armour in the 17th century was generally poorer in quality and bullet resistance than earlier armour. The peak was in the second half of the 16th century for armour quality. What did happen in the 17th century was a contraction in armour coverage to allow for thicker plates over the most vital places (breastplate and helm). You would have still been safer in a harness of the finest plate from the late 16th to maybe very early 17th century from somewhere like Innsbruck or Greenwich.

 Haighus wrote:

Edit: a society based around air rifles would be really cool. I think they are a great example of a tech that is not that hard to produce if you have the knowledge. They could probably have made late medieval/renaissance air rifles if someone had thought of the idea.

What no one remembers Amtrak Wars?


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Since we have segue into armour, an adjacent topic to firearms, do you yanks also posses body armour? Post apocalyptic or otherwise.

Whilst firearms have multiple applications, one that makes the news over here is the portrayal of Americans all believing they need guns to defend themselves (I exaggerate but only slightly, our media does delight in sterotypes). Part of that defensive posture would be body armour of some type, and I guess a basic medi kit including an Israeli bandage and tourniquet.

Is there much overlap or is it a small minority of firearm owners that would also have armour? And are first aid kits part of a daily carry/car set up?

I don't currently but if money was never going to be a limiting factor I would probably get an IOTV or a plate carrier. I had the IOTV during deployment so I would go with what I know most likely. Although I believe there is some other stuff on the market now that is far more discrete. I don't think I need armor right now maybe never would. I would get all the trimmings (Plates and side plates ect) except the canteens. That would include an Ifak and somewhere to stuff candy.
armor also means I would have to find a helmet. This is quickly getting out of hand.
Because I would keep adding to the kit. Gasmasks, nvgs and why stop there.
This got expensive fast.

 Haighus wrote:
Yes, a 15th or 16th century longbowmen is longer ranged and faster firing than a Napoleonic musketeer.

Leaving aside that the English longbow is decidedly not representative of the typical European bow, when you see range comparisons it's usually maximum arced distance for bows compared to some arbitrary point target effective range for muskets- totally apples and oranges.

Spanish musketeers of the Italian Wars could engage infantry formations at up to 500m, effective fire at 300-500m was not unheard of during the Thirty Years War (decidedly pre-Napoleonic), and you can find firsthand accounts from both conflicts attesting to the superiority of firearms in range and effectiveness over bows. By the time of the English Civil War in the mid-1650s, English longbows were relegated to second-rate militias supplying their own arms and typically re-equipped with pike and shot when able. In Japan, the tanegashima introduced in 1543 was rapidly adopted by samurai and ashigaru already trained in the use of the bow, and they praised its superior range and power- as was lamented by the Koreans invaded in the 1590s, as Yu Songyong described the Japanese gunners killing from ranges where Korean arrows fell short. In the Americas, natives who fought the settlers started to widely acquire guns in the early-1600s, abandoning their traditional bows in the face of superior firepower. Maybe bows could sustain a higher rate of fire- though I think commenters often gloss over the difficulty of maintaining a high rate of fire with a weapon that is physically exhausting to use- but by all accounts it doesn't appear to have been enough of an advantage for anyone to favor the bow.

That old hoary myth Kodos is repeating, that bows were better on the battlefield but guns were just easier to spam, is pop history born from romanticism over displaced cultural traditions of archery. It's nonsense, in the same vein as katana worship. Every bow-armed society that went up against Renaissance-era guns either got guns of their own ASAP or got conquered before they could.

Now, a modern-style compound bow or crossbow does perform better than medieval equivalents, providing performance like the English longbow without requiring a lifetime of physical training, and can be DIY'd using springs to provide the necessary energy storage. There's also utility in having a quiet weapon for stealthy use, and training to handle a black powder firearm is an awful lot trickier than it's made out to be (as you noted, this was the domain of professionals, not conscripts), but for raw effectiveness there's still no contest and I'm not sure how difficult it is to improvise modern-style arrows/bolts. If you are able to work out the chemistry, producing large quantities of powder and casting projectiles is a more efficient and scalable process than handmaking arrows. Plus beyond small arms, something like a falconet or swivel gun would be an immediate mission kill if you could connect with a car engine.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On arrow recovery? I suspect it was used as a source of extra, but not something you’d exactly rely on.

Salvaging after the battle? Yeah, I can see that, if only to recover the heads and possibly flights, with the shafts only being reused in extremis, due to the stresses being shot puts on them.

An arrow that doesn't break can be reused. If it does break usually it's the head separating from the shaft, and that can be repaired. There's historical evidence that arrows were sometimes salvaged after a battle, but it doesn't appear to have been common enough practice to be significantly documented.

Despite having got no plate carrier, I have got a load est with mole attachments and a mole warbelt, I bought all of those because I needed them in the army, with a fair few pouches.

I'd hate to feel like a larper going around with a full complement.

I still keep what I have though, both for the reserve and for rapid shooting, since we plan on using them to fight over little challenges using them.

You needed to get your own load vest, too?

However I've got a full military like first aid pouche, I keep it in my car all the time. If I ever happen to stumble across an accident on the road or at the range, I'll have basic necessities like tourniquets available. Better safe than sorry, while educated shooters are theorically safe, something can always go unexpectedly wrong, and when guns are involved, it can bring severe consequences with it.


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 Bobthehero wrote:
You needed to get your own load vest, too?

Over time I gradually had to by more and more pouches and equipment to actually outfit myself realtivly properly: radio pouches, ammo pouches, dump pouch...

While I was a trainee at the cavalry school, my squadron didn't have enough plate carriers, so I was told to get something by myself.

Jeez. At least the reason I bought my vest was because the issued one is... not ideal, to remain polite.

It did help that I got to free-trial the current vest I got because my friend was issued it when he went to train in another country, and lent it to me for a while so I knew what I was getting into.

Yeah, to be fair if it hadn't been for this I wouldn't have bought any tactical stuff. I prefer spending the money on guns and ammunition.

Thing is buying such expensive items for a quick friendly challenges from time to time is really to expensive for the use I'd make of it.

The elephant in the room in the Mad Max discussion is cannon.

The most basic firearm, and utterly devastating. The whole setup in The Road Warrior ends with the first cannon shot.

If you can build all those fancy wartrukks, you can forge a cannon. If you you can formulate nitro-fuel, you can make black powder.

The big advantage of a "recovery" civilization over a primitive one is that it knows certain things are possible. Gunpowder is known, the question isn't "if" but "how." With the imperative of war, solutions will be found.

One other thought: landfills. These are ready-made repositories of aluminum, steel, and other metals. It's even refined! I recall a science teacher in grade school suggesting that in due time, these would be mined - especially the older ones, which had more metal and less plastic.

Yeah, in the event of an apocalypse technology would only revert so far. The only way we go back to the stone age is if the only people who survive are tribals in the middle of the rainforest somewhere.

The main hurdle of technology is actually figuring out what works. Once you have that making it work is the easy part.

Blackpowder is fairly easy. And if you know that it is charcoal+saltpeter+sulpher you can do it, even if you don't know the exact combination. That is what trial and error is for, but you have the advantage of knowing it works in a post-apocalypse. And presumably you can loot books and such to help even more.

Realistically, a post-apocalyptic society on Earth will revert back to Renaissance level technology at worst. And there will likely be a few societies who maintain modern weaponry, electricity, and manufacturing enough to carry that forward. Those who manage to survive without any modern technology will go back to pike formations backed up by cannon and muskets, but modern weapons will be sprinkled about and never disappear and slowly return to common use. Though many modern luxuries will definitely disappear for everybody. No more internet. Food will be a challenge for a while. Running water will still exist, but be more limited(though lots of buildings will be around with pipe systems you can retrofit).

RE: body armor. Yes I have body armor. I have a single plate carrier, probably should get another one or two. I currently have 2 sets of plates. A level 3 steel set which is 2 chest/back plates and 2 side plates, but in my carrier I currently have the 2 side plates and 2 level 4 ceramic plates in the chest/back slots. The plate carrier also has a medical kit(bandages, sutures, misc supplies and tourniquet), 3 mag pouch, and pistol holster on it.

I would say that it is fairly common for people who have guns to get body armor if they are anything beyond casual owners(only like 1-2 guns). If there is a tacticool guy, he's definitely has body armor unless he is also a cheapskate. Body armor is also pretty affordable. If you settle for kevlar you can get surplus stuff for sub $100. It'll only stop pistols and you'll have broken ribs, but its better than nothing. A full set of level 3s in a plate carrier will be $3-400 usually. Level 4 plates are where it gets really expensive. 3-400 per plate. And there is some insane stuff available now. Adept Armor makes a plate that can... kinda... stop .50BMG. Its like $650

I really should get another set of level 4 plates and a different camo plate carrier... Level 4 Ceramic plates are much better protection, but the downside vs level 3 steel plates is that they are only good for a few hits. Steel plates, if they aren't penetrated, can last for more repeated punishment. Ceramics are usually only good for 2-3 hits before they become useless. Steel, if its a threat they are rated for, can survive more repeat hits. Especially if its pistol calibers. Pistols won't go through ceramics at first, but they will shred it. Steel plates can basically tank pistol calibers more or less indefinitely, but they weigh like 3 times as much.

Why rennaisance level?

Also massed formations require massed population so i doubt a return to tercios.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Why rennaisance level?

Also massed formations require massed population so i doubt a return to tercios.

Europe's population back then was tiny, yet they supported them.

I think the "floor" would be late 18th Century. Steam power is not a hard concept, and there's enough metal around to hack a boiler and turbine together. Indeed, there are functional steam engines still in use.

Also, you can use charcoal to run it rather than refining oil, which was why it was so popular.

As for body armor, no I don't have any, most of the collectors I know don't, either. I've got helmets of various vintages that Uncle Sam lost track of, including my father's helmet liner, which he used as a painting hat. He gave it to me and I got the steel pot, chin strap and cover for it, which is fun. I picked up a US WW I helmet at an auction 25 years ago, complete with original liner. I got it cheap, because all the money was chasing the German stuff. I subsequently picked up a later issue version (maybe Canadian?) at a surplus store with modern webbing and a mesh cover.