New Weekend Knowledge Dump From Greg Ellifritz

 Greg Ellifritz has published a new Weekend Knowledge Dump. Some highlights:

    There is a nice selection of articles for revolver shooters including:

• Claude Werner's course outline for his "Teaching the Snub Nosed Revolver" (including links to targets and the LAPD qualification manual used as part of the course).
• A comparison and test of several speed loader designs from HKS, Safariland, 5 Star, Pachmayr, Maxfire, and Speedbeez. The author tested not just speed of reloading, but how well (strongly) they held the cartridges. 
• An article on sight regulation and point of impact, or why does my revolver have such a tall front sight post?
• A link to an article discussing carrying 5 or 6 rounds in a old 6-shooter (note: typically with the old SAA and similar firearms, the chamber under the firing pin was left empty to avoid an accidental discharge because there was nothing keeping the firing pin from resting on the primer--and this was a habit that carried forward for many decades even after the introduction of design features to prevent such problems). 
  
• And a link to the Revolver Guy's test of a grip from a Taurus snubby on a S&W J-frame.

There are, of course, a bunch of other articles that will be of interest to the defensive shooter. One I want to emphasize is an article at Outside Magazine on the efficacy of bear spray versus using firearms. The author of what are probably considered the seminal studies on bear defense using spray and bear defense using firearms points that the two studies cannot compared to one another because the criteria were so different. For instance, the bear spray study mostly involved the use of bear spray to drive off bear that were curious or had gotten too close, not bears attacking victims; whereas, a substantial number of firearms incidents studied involved bear attacks. Also, the gun study didn't include the majority of bear attacks in Alaska because it did not include the Alaska Defense of Life and Property (DLP) records. In addition, the article relates: "The point of 'Efficacy of Firearms' wasn’t to arrive at a conclusion on whether or not firearms work but, rather, to analyze the reasons why they didn’t—'poor aim, no time to use them, jammed, etc.,' elaborates Smith." 

    Another interesting point from the article is that bear spray is less effective against black bears (which are responsible for the majority of bear attacks) than brown bears.