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Another ignorance question. Yay?

When you visit the gun range, is there a set relative distance for effective weapon ranges?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another ignorance question. Yay?

When you visit the gun range, is there a set relative distance for effective weapon ranges?

In switzerland most Ranges are standardized , 300 m for assault rifles with iron sights and i believe 50 for handguns?!? But we have a slightly wierd gun culture.

Back on the rifle range for the first time since lockdown at the weekend!

Man, I have not gone shooting in forever. I'm jealous. How far is that, distance wise?

I'm still not inclined to go to my local, relatively cramped range until there is a vaccine, because the types of people that show up at my range are not mask-wearers. I'm dying to go, but I'm not... dying to go. It's not my intent to star a 'rona or political thing here, I'm just saying much like going to the movies, it's a thing I can't do right now.

I am perpetually jealous of you guys, like Captain Jake, that can shoot on their own property. It is my dream.


Unrelated note, but if we get another check this year, I vowed I would finally get myself that deagle. I have gotten so close over the years, but I never have been able to pull the trigger on it because, well, there are many reasons not to get a deagle. This really might be the year, though!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
When you visit the gun range, is there a set relative distance for effective weapon ranges?

It is not at all standardized, but it would be very unusual to see a rifle range that was not at least 100 yards\91 meters. That would be considered fairly close for a rifle.

Better ranges are further. I wish we had a 800 yard range around here, but we don't. The longest one in my area - which is members only, so I have not gone - is 400 yards \ 365 meters. That's still not what you would consider far with a rifle.

That's 300 yards, we also shot at 400. The range goes back to 600.

It was all done very "socially distanced", with one person per lane shooting and in the butts, and as it's all outside I felt pretty comfortable.

The range I'm a member at has a number of different ranges on the property. A 50/100 general purpose rifle range, a 200-300/600 yard range (it can be set up for 600 but usually isn't), an indoor rimfire 20 yard range, a 15/25/50 yard handgun range, and some action ranges that are for competition/training/dynamic shooting that are all under 50 yards. Most ranges I've been to in general usually only get out to 100 yards, but that's also generally been in pretty urban areas.

I've never gotten to shoot at 600yards+ sadly.

Slinky, that outdoor range looks gorgeous.

 Ouze wrote:


Unrelated note, but if we get another check this year, I vowed I would finally get myself that deagle. I have gotten so close over the years, but I never have been able to pull the trigger on it because, well, there are many reasons not to get a deagle. This really might be the year, though!

Gold tiger striped of course I'm assuming?

Obviously. It's that or nothing, if I'm gonna.

 Ouze wrote:
Obviously. It's that or nothing, if I'm gonna.

Diamond Safety for total class?

Most ranges have set distances for targets, or least demarcations for certain ranges. Usually 25 and 50 meters/yards for pistols. And then the rifle portions will usually be set in increments of 100 meters/yards.

Zeroed in the Romeo Predator edition sight on the Fostech, then played with the Echo trigger a bit today.

Okay, just stumbled upon this: FK BRNO PSD 7.5FK. Basically a 10mm round necked down to 7.5mm. 2000fps from a 5 inch barrel. Also comes with a 10mm barrel. If you want all you need is a new barrel and mags to shoot 9mm or .40 S&W.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPqv4bgZgCM

Thats gonna be a heck of a zippy cartridge, also expensive. Definitely need to reload that if you get one.

Logistical considerations with ammunition are a major part of gun owning in this moment, or so I am told, and especially I would be suspicious of any ammo manufactory, probably, if they are setting up new production, its going to be the very easy to sell 9mm, and not the very obscure new ammo that nobody has heard much of. So if this gun becomes at all popular, it will likely outstrip its ammo supply.

Also, looks neat.

Well, this ammo wouldn't need a completely new production line. Since its necked down 10mm, you can use existing 10mm casings and put them through the press to reneck them. Then the only proprietary component will be the actual bullet. And since this caliber isn't super popular, and neither is 10mm, the ammo you do produce is not going to be snapped up as quickly.

That said, I'm sure only the company who designed this pistol will be producing it in any quantity because its so niche. Frankly, if I was going to neck down a 10mm cartridge I would probably use bullets from a smaller, but also common, caliber. Maybe 8mm Nambu or some other .32 caliber bullet. 7.5 is weird. Even a 7.62 Tokarev bullet would be more common.

Here are mine:

- Tauros Millenium G2 9MM : personal defense
- Ranger Arms (Marlin) 22 M34 : squirrel hunting rifle, passed down from my great grandfather
- Remington 28 Gauge Shotgun (forget which model it is): quail, rabbit, and squirrel hunting, passed down from my wife's grandfather
- Ithaca Featherweight 12 Gauge Shotgun : have hunted doves with it but it has etching on it and was won in a poker game by my grandfather. It sits on a mantle on the house and is nice to look at
- Remington 8700 12 Gauge Super Mag : turkey hunting, quail hunting, home defense
- Browning A-Bolt 308 : deer hunting
- Thompson Center Renegade 54 Caliber Muzzleloader : deer hunting

I also have a crossbow as well that I use for deer hunting.

Hi guys,

I want to replace the optic on my Scorpion EVO 3 micro S2. I currently have a Fastfire 3 on it, and it's a really nice sight - but it's too small for the frame. I didn't know it would be so small, it really would be best on a pistol. I love everything about it except how small it is.

I have a couple of different candidates for a gun that will be shot pretty close (no magnification needed). My criteria are that I am not - repeat not - shopping solely on budget, I am happy to pay a premium if it is worth it. Nothing by Vortex, as I didn't like their glass. It has to look cool. I want as little body/tube in the way as possible. Additionally, I have astigmatism, to the extent that matters.

MRO
pros: seems to be the least body/tube. I like the big objective window.
cons: a bit expensive.
cons: I am not sure what mount I need for a absolute co-witness on a scorpion. Maybe I could remove the irons and go with a nice low mount?
cons: jesus rifles

Holosun HE510C-GR
pros: I like the looks, and doesn't seem to have a lot of "body" in the way.
cons: I don't know if Holosun is a trustworthy or reliable brand

Eotech XPS2 green
pros: I heard this was good, but man, is it spendy. is the green dot worth an extra hundo?
cons: I've heard they don't have great build quality or last
cons, maybe?: this is where I think astigmatism might be a problem.

Romeo5
pros: Sig is, I think, a good company
pros: not very expensive
cons: I don't like bikini covers
cons: is this really significantly different or better than a Bushnell TRS25, which is even cheaper?

Romeo MSR:
pros: looks very cool
pros: comes in green...
cons: ...for an extra $60
cons: I don't know literally anything about this scope

Bushnell TRS-25
pros: unspeakably cheap
cons: feels cheap, just a hair above airsoft
cons: I don't like bikini covers
cons: they do not look cool
cons: I suspect better scopes have better glass
cons: I own two and one of them flaked out on me after a few years and flickers on and off with recoil

Thanks for your thoughts!

so I have direct experience with this gun and a couple of these optics!

So on my Scorpion, I originally had a TRS-25, because it was cheap, and did co-witness with the irons. It worked, but it had a small eye box and probably could've used a riser, it didn't like getting dropped much causing some weirdness with the dial settings. For $90, it was totally worth it, but it was only $90.

I replaced it with the Holosun 510C (predecessor to the -GR). I put it on the gun three years ago, turned it on, and haven't turned it off. It's kept zero well enough for 50 yard shooting (all I've shot it at the last couple years), haven't needed to replace the battery, takes getting dropped like a champ, has a quick-release mount that positions the sight pretty nicely, and it looks awesome. The sight box is huge, it's really easy to maneuver with the gun, keeping both eyes open, and still maintain an accurate sight picture. It does not however cowitness with the irons. These are also more expensive than they used to be, if you can find them at all they seem to be $310-ish, they used to be available ~$250ish and routinely on sale for as little as $200. I haven't had problems with any of my 510C's, but another basic tube red dot of theirs had to go through a couple rounds of warranty before it worked right, but they have a lifetime warranty like Vortex or Leupold where they'll basically take anything back ever.

The Eotech I don't own but have played with, it's much like the Holosun, just more expensive. Didn't get to test on durability or anything like that.

The Sig optics are actually designed just a few miles down the road from me, but I haven't actually tried either the Romeo5 or MSR much.

MRO's are neat, I think they'd make a great option for a Scorpion, but would be the most expensive option, and I'm not sure they're worth the extra dough if you're not beating it up or doing tons of night vision stuff.

I have an Eotech (red not green) on one of my rifles. If you have an astigmatism you definitely need to wear your corrective lenses when using the Eotech. First time I turned it on I did not have my glasses on and thought the sight was defective it was so blurry. With my glasses on it is perfect, and I love it.

I have the 'Predator' version of the Sig Romeo 5 on my Fostech rifle (so green dot in a green triangle is one of the options on the sight). I too am not a fan of the covers, but they do work, and I do like the sight a lot.

Have a buddy with a couple Holosun sights. He likes them.

Thanks, guys. The Eotech has take a precipitous drop, and the Holosun has risen quite a bit.

Can you remove that outer metal shroud from the Holosuns? It looks like painting them doesn't void your warranty.

Red dot sights are always something that has intrigued me, but I've never taken the jump. I grew up with a strict training in iron sights (never got used to a peep sight though) or a scope for precision shooting.

Call me a fogy, but it took me a while to get used to tritium night sights, although I do kind of like the See-All open sight.

I once asked if buying a cheap one would give me the general experience before shelling out for a decent red dot, but was told the difference is like night and day.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Red dot sights are always something that has intrigued me, but I've never taken the jump. I grew up with a strict training in iron sights (never got used to a peep sight though) or a scope for precision shooting.

Call me a fogy, but it took me a while to get used to tritium night sights, although I do kind of like the See-All open sight.

I once asked if buying a cheap one would give me the general experience before shelling out for a decent red dot, but was told the difference is like night and day.

I was the same way, then I fired a buddy's AR with an Aimpoint PRO on it.

My Dad is even more Old School. He visited and fired a few of mine with different red dots. He asked for one for Christmas so last year I got him a Vortex for his AR. He loves it.

Ouze wrote:Thanks, guys. The Eotech has take a precipitous drop, and the Holosun has risen quite a bit.

Can you remove that outer metal shroud from the Holosuns? It looks like painting them doesn't void your warranty.

Honestly I'm not sure if you can remove the housing, I can't find the manual but I think you could. Haven't tried it

cuda1179 wrote:Red dot sights are always something that has intrigued me, but I've never taken the jump. I grew up with a strict training in iron sights (never got used to a peep sight though) or a scope for precision shooting.

Call me a fogy, but it took me a while to get used to tritium night sights, although I do kind of like the See-All open sight.

I once asked if buying a cheap one would give me the general experience before shelling out for a decent red dot, but was told the difference is like night and day.

Red dot/Reflex sights are amazing. Once you've got it zeroed, there's no comparison to iron sights. Being able to maneuver a weapon with both eyes open and being able to pull the trigger as soon as the glowing red dot is on the target is awesome. They're not for precision shooting, most of the time the dot itself is 2-4MoA depending on models, so may be larger than groups your rifle is capable of if that's your thing (though so is the front sight post of many rifles), but if all you're shooting for is to hit center-mass on a target at under 300 yards, no other sighting system works as well.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ouze wrote:Thanks, guys. The Eotech has take a precipitous drop, and the Holosun has risen quite a bit.

Can you remove that outer metal shroud from the Holosuns? It looks like painting them doesn't void your warranty.

Honestly I'm not sure if you can remove the housing, I can't find the manual but I think you could. Haven't tried it

cuda1179 wrote:Red dot sights are always something that has intrigued me, but I've never taken the jump. I grew up with a strict training in iron sights (never got used to a peep sight though) or a scope for precision shooting.

Call me a fogy, but it took me a while to get used to tritium night sights, although I do kind of like the See-All open sight.

I once asked if buying a cheap one would give me the general experience before shelling out for a decent red dot, but was told the difference is like night and day.

Red dot/Reflex sights are amazing. Once you've got it zeroed, there's no comparison to iron sights. Being able to maneuver a weapon with both eyes open and being able to pull the trigger as soon as the glowing red dot is on the target is awesome. They're not for precision shooting, most of the time the dot itself is 2-4MoA depending on models, so may be larger than groups your rifle is capable of if that's your thing (though so is the front sight post of many rifles), but if all you're shooting for is to hit center-mass on a target at under 300 yards, no other sighting system works as well.

There are a couple of tips and tricks you can use for the RDS dot size and precision shooting. Most of my RDS are zeroed on the top of the dot. I know finding the tip of a round item isn't super easy but it can be done. That means you aren't aiming with a ~4 MOA item any more. My RDS on my AK can outshoot me easily. Red Dots are vastly superior to irons for ease of use, speed of use, ability to get a good sight picture without a good cheek weld, use in low light and ability to be target focused in shooting. Literally if you're looking at your RDS you're doing it wrong. Look at your target and get the dot on it.

As for the quality, there are cheaper options but not cheap options. You're paying for what's essentially delicate electronics that will be subject to the recoil impulse and possibly rough handling. About the cheapest you can go is Primary Arms. If you're in the market for "testing" but willing to take the cheapness into consideration then there is nothing wrong with the TRS-25/Primary Arms level of sights. Both will work very well for general use too but once you upgrade to the better sights with better projectors and better glass it is like night and day. Holosun seem to be very solidly placed in the middle of the field. My personal favourite is Aimpoint, having used their sights since the Comp M with a staggering 50 hours battery life. Trijicon are also epic. I've only had bad experiences with Eotech, but those were ~2010 ones. The new ones may be better.

These days though if I was interested in "precision" and "fast" and weight wasn't specifically my issue I'd grab something along the lines of a Short Dot 1-4x scope. This allows Red Dot style use at 1x or 1.1x setting and a 4x for longer range use. With a quick throw lever on there it allows switching quickly. A good budget contender is the Vortex Crossfire II. It sells at around $200. IMHO these are the best of both worlds but YMMV.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another ignorance question. Yay?

When you visit the gun range, is there a set relative distance for effective weapon ranges?

That depends on the range and firearm type.
Outside ranges typically have set range distances as they have rows of target stands or plates.
Inside ranges typically allow you to adjust the distance to whatever you want.
Shooting bays typically allow you to either places the targets at any preferred distance, or place them near the berm, but yourself can be where you want.

Started shooting again last month after taking a month off to keep from getting Covid before the Boy's wedding. Shot an IDPA match and a falling steel match. Fun. Unfortunately with the current bullet bubble hoarding my reserve so mostly dry fire practice.

Hands up who wants to answer another idiot NooB ignorance question?

No one?

HAHA! Tough luck, buster! I’m asking it anyway!

Silencers. I gather they’re broadly if not completely illegal.

But I equally gather their efficiency is somewhat overstated in popular media.

So my question is......what do you consider the most accurate portrayal of a silenced weapon in movies?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hands up who wants to answer another idiot NooB ignorance question?

No one?

HAHA! Tough luck, buster! I’m asking it anyway!

Silencers. I gather they’re broadly if not completely illegal.

But I equally gather their efficiency is somewhat overstated in popular media.

So my question is......what do you consider the most accurate portrayal of a silenced weapon in movies?

In movies? Almost always unrealistic.

I'd have to re-watch but maybe one of the John Wick movie may have been accurate.

But, it's never silenced. Really what you're asking is how well suppressors work and here's how I'd describe it.

Shooting firearms w/o ear protection can really do a number on your hearing. However, when you use the suppressors, it's still really REALLY loud, but not so loud that you'd wanna wear ear suppressors. There's actually all kinds of demo of this on Youtube.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hands up who wants to answer another idiot NooB ignorance question?

No one?

HAHA! Tough luck, buster! I’m asking it anyway!

Silencers. I gather they’re broadly if not completely illegal.

Hrm, not quite. At the federal level in the US, they're controlled as NFA items, but this basically as long as you're willing to do the extra paper and pay $200 to the ATF they're not any legally harder to obtain than anything else, they are banned in some specific states however, but in some other nations they're completely unregulated or aren't any more regulated than normal firearms, and often are mandatory in certain places for hunting (people 2 miles away don't want to hear your gunfire).

But I equally gather their efficiency is somewhat overstated in popular media.

So my question is......what do you consider the most accurate portrayal of a silenced weapon in movies?

Honestly, they're so wildly inconsistently portrayed, and there's so many factors involved in their use (ammunition choice, base weapon platform, suppressor design, etc) that it's hard to say. A manually operated .22lr with a supressor sporting internal rubber baffle wipes firing subsonic ammo is going to be practically impossible to hear, a 9mm handgun with a good suppressor can be safe with subsonic ammo but unsafe with supersonic ammo, and a suppressed short barrel 556 is still going to leave you deafened temporarily without earpro. Movie magic being what it is, it's all over the place

Indeed. If you don't live in a dumb state, like CA or NY, a Suppressor is not too difficult to get. You just file paperwork, pay $200, and wait for it to go through and then you get it. There are even Kiosks you can go to in some places that'll handle all the paper work for you and you can get it done. This is the same process you'd go through to turn a weapon into an SBR as well, minus the needing to engrave the firearm with your name and address.

As Vakathi said, some countries actually mandate the use of a suppressor for hunting.

Frankly, there is no legitimate reason to regulate suppressors. They in no way conceal the fact a gun was fired except at very extreme distances. The main purpose of a suppressor is actually for hearing protection. To make a truly quiet assassins weapon, you need to take some ridiculous steps with the entire gun, not just slap a suppressor on it.

Something like a De Lisle Carbine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Lisle_carbine

That is about as close as you can get to a truly silent firearm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv6C5GjUPt8

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So my question is......what do you consider the most accurate portrayal of a silenced weapon in movies?

The best (and closest to accurate) portrayal of suppressors/silencers in film that I have seen is in the 2020 Netflix film Extraction. It's the one with Chris Hemsworth.

Besides all the demonstration videos you can find on YouTube, in terms of an actual movie, I can't think of any other films that get as close to an accurate portrayal as in Extraction.

Also keeping in mind what others have already said: type of firearm, type of ammunition (subsonic or supersonic), model of suppressor/silencer, etc., will all have a significant impact on what a shot from that specific suppressed weapon will sound like.

I apologize this will ramble, as I am throwing my thoughts and memories on the wall to fill the topic answer (with a few decible numbers looked up after "so roughly".

You can look up the decible levels of firearms and see what noises they are similar to silenced or unsilenced. Without a silencer, its an explosion, you can't really fail to hear it, your ears ring (evidence of hearing loss that is likely permanent) if you lack ear protection, the boom can shake the glass on the stall in which you fire, and can be felt, physically felt, as a shockwave. Big hunting pistols do this too, or big game rifles. Or high powered magnum shell shotguns in a confined space.
Short barreled firearms like personal defense weaponry (pdw) often do this as well, because they are usually firing bullets made for much longer barreley guns, and the powder burn is not complete by the time it hits the air. So you are shooting a cloud of finely ground up explosive into the air, and making the worlds smallest fuel-air boom analog, each bullet. But I do totally digress. Long barrel with slow bullet built for shorter barrel is the quietest end of the calculus there.

So for example. shotguns, rifles, and most pistols fall broadly in the 140 to 160 decible range. (140 is the rough threshold of pain. 60ish is a conversation). This is difficult to measure as the noises they make are often very brief, and will throw some mearsuring devices for a loop trying to get the area under a curve that is too short in width, so to speak. Subsonic .22 lr about 120. Full sonic .22lr (a tiny, weak bullet) is 140. 6 decibls per double, so that's 6 times louder.

So roughly.
120 .. loud noisy environment. eg, noisy bar or disco dance hall.
130 .. air raid siren
140 .. front row of a rock concert.
150 .. vibrates your chest cavity hard
160 .. if sustained, permanent and irreversible hearing loss to include eardrum rupture.
164 .. for a VERY brief time .. a 357 magnum pistol firing.
170 this is a howitzer cannon being fired. I am not sure if its possible to make such a noise completely safe with earpro alone. So ... LOUD.

Silencers reduce the noise level. Usually by 20 or 30 decibels of supression, which moves you from the "quiet" noise of a 357 to the "quiet" noise of an air raid siren going off. This will, however, not cause the same hearing loss in yourself or your downrange opponent.

Good ear protection will do about 30 decibles by itself (I mean, soft foam inserts beneath outer ear "muff" style earpro) .. so you can pretty much go from "I just caused permanent hearing loss" to "wow, k, that was loud and I felt it vibrate my body but my ears are ok" by putting on earmuffs/plugs. Don't trust just one layer of the stuff -- earplugs can get out of place, earmuffs can be not quite tight. You may scratch your hand to your ear just when Roscoe fires his .454 casull next to you. Good to have 2 layers. But I digress.

Silencers reduce the decibel levels far more on "quieter" rounds that don't break the sound barrier. For example, the silencerco omega reduces a .308 down to about 133 decibles, but a blackout with subsonic ammunition (that's an EXTREMELY similar sized bullet moving rather slower) all the way down to 117. Many rifle rounds that are supersonic will make the sonic boomlet on leaving the silencer anyway, which somewhat is stealth defeating, while heavier, slower bullets can be shushed far more effectively. Lightest bullets need much more (Ke = mvsquared/2, after all) speed to have effect ... and you can't hide the sonic boom from the shot, when you fire something like a 22/250 at ... I don't even know, about 4000 fps? Its fast. And tiny. and thus, loud no matter if the gun is quieted.

The legendary de lisle carbine gets a bit quieter than that, with a massive silencer the length of the gun itself, firing a slow moving .45 acp round down to 89 decibels or so. (if I remember right), which is below what most people recognize as a gunshot. Its more like someone dropped a small piece of lumber off in the woods, or a twig broke loudly. Its still louder than people talking by 25 db. In modern shooting, subsonic shells from a .22lr of some sort with a honking big silencer on it CAN be very quiet, almost delisle quiet. (the delisle used what it did for wartime availability. As I remember, some guy just up and invented the thing on his own time and handed if off to the british military out of a sense of patriotic pride/duty. Since .45 was less than 1100 feetpersecond (or 343ish mps for you Euros), it was a big, slow round, and the carbine was far longer than the pistols it usually had its powder optimized to burn up in the length of.
Point is, you can also fire a subsonic round through a fairly large .22lr calibrated supressor and get a soudn that is fairly close to the sound of a delisle.

When you get into shush ranges, you end up looking for a bolt action rifle ... it makes no noise because it won't reload by slamming the internal mechanism back and forth. The delisle carbine was also a bolt action .45 acp, so it was a big, heavy, slow, subsonic round shot through a silencer almost the length of a normal rifles' barrel. Which you could then reload very quietly while the germans tried to figure out if their friend had just fallen or what...

Anyway. The best common representaiton of a silenced round would be, perhaps, taking a large book such as people sit on the table to impress their friends with pictures of Machu Pichu or such, and slamming it down ont he table. BAM.
Its a brief sound and its loud, and you can't really go "gosh, that sure was a noisy cricket chirp" because the table presumably makes a lot of noise. But... you didn't damage your ears, you didn't lose hearing, your ears won't ring and you won't be temporarily deafened by the blast.

A really quiet .22lr suppressor can shave about 45 decibles off your noise level. A .22lr firing ammunition below the speed of sound probably is aroudn 120 decibles to start with. Special ammunition (like 60 grain aquila "sniper" subsonic ammunition) is built to weigh more by about 50 percent than a normal .22 round, and thus, to require less speed to have impact. You can make that pretty quiet (an ambulance siren is about 120 decibels, incidentally, of course, the sound has a short duration).

60 grain aquila 22lr is already shush by comparison, a slow round moving through an appropriate barrel, which (you REALLY want a bolt action for that) should be a 9 to 1 twist, not a 16 to 1 (or the big bullet will tumble sideways and destroy your silencer's insides, removing all hope of quiet or accuracy.

But if you set it up right, you basically have built a close analog of the delisle carbine in .22lr form. Squirrels need fear you, for your neighbors won't hear you.