Gun & Prepping News #97

Some links that may be of interest: 

• "Practical Pistol Practice"--Tactical Anatomy Systems. As the author notes, firearms practice is tradeoff between the very real costs of ammunition versus the benefit obtained from a lot of shooting. Therefore, he presents a practice/training regime for the handgun incorporating a mixture of dry fire, using a .22 pistol, and a 50-round practice drill shooting your larger caliber defensive pistol. The author uses dry fire both to practice basic pistol skills between range sessions and as part of his warm up at the range. Then he moves on to the .22 pistol to work on pure pistol skills: grip, stance, sight picture, trigger press, and follow-through, writing: "I like to fire 3 to 5 sets of 10 rounds, slow fire, at 7-10 yards. Each successive target will show a slightly tighter group. Your last target will typically be quite a bit better. At this point, you’re warmed up." Finally, he recommends:

Pick a good 50-round practice drill. A 50-round practice drill every week will benefit you far, far more than a 200-round practice drill once per month. Frequency of training has been proven to be far more effective than total time/ammo spent in training. As for which 50-round drill you should use, there’s a plethora of recommendations out there. This morning, I did a quick googly search for “50-round practice drills” and got pages and pages of recommendations. Pick one, and use it. Most of the time nowadays, when I go to the range I start with my dry fire warmup, then usually a 22 rimfire warmup, then I do one of the many 50-round practice plans that are available online. I’ve used a bunch of different 50-round drills over the years and they all have their strong points, so if you rotate through different ones you’ll find yourself working on more pistol skills than if you stick with a single program. 

• "Homeowner’s Gun Stops Intruder Where the Law Failed"--Shooting News Weekly. Key bit: "The residents woke up to a stranger in their home. The homeowner did the adult thing: he armed himself and when Xavier confronted him, the homeowner changed the intruder’s preferred pronouns to was/were." 
• "Know How: Understanding and Obtaining a Cold-Bore Zero"--American Hunter. Barrel temperature can effect where a bullet strikes. And since you first shot will be from a cold barrel, you need to know where that bullet will land. 
• "Revolver Malfunctions and Stoppages"--Revolver Guy. Revolvers are more dependable than semi-autos in the sense that they are more immune to neglect, poor grip, or poor ammo, but that does not mean that they cannot malfunction. The article covers some of the more common malfunctions and breakages that can occur with a revolver including broken springs, broken firing pins, a broken or worn hand (the part that actually turns the cylinder), worn ratchets, a broken or worn cylinder stop (the part that aligns the cylinder with the barrel), and more. Along the way, he provides information on diagnosing problems, cleaning and lubrication, and other trouble shooting. 
• Some firearm history: "The Hand Cannon: The First Handheld Firearm"--American Rifleman. An excerpt:

One of the more striking details in the segment comes from American Rifleman Executive Editor Evan Brune, who pointed out that many surviving hand cannons share a bore diameter in the .75-to-.78-caliber range—a size established in the 1330s and 1340s that persisted as a near-standard all the way into the early 19th century. That’s roughly 500 years of continuity in a dimension that was arrived at by medieval metalworkers without the benefit of ballistic science. It suggests that the practical limits of what a person can hold and fire were understood early and changed slowly. 

• And some new technology: "The Problem with Pressures: A +Peak Revolution?"--American Hunter. The Peak Alloy cases are a type of steel case that can handle significantly higher pressures than traditional brass cases, but without resorting to hybrid designs such as used by the military for the 6.8 mm. Moreover, assuming you're not trying to use it in an older rifle with inferior metallurgy, it can offer that performance out of existing rifles. However, it is currently only offered for the 7mm Backcountry and 6.5 Creedmoor.

The elevated pressure limits will certainly increase the demands on the rifles receiver, and that was probably a big factor in choosing the popular 6.5 Creedmoor as the first cartridge to receive the +Peak treatment, as the vast majority of rifles so chambered are of relatively new construction, and have the stronger metallurgy associated with the 21st century.  

• "Unrivaled Upgrades: Competition-Bred AR Parts for the Rest of Us"--The Truth About Guns. These do not appear to be competition parts, per se, but parts that were influenced by what Unrivaled learned from making competition parts.
• "PSA JAKL-10 .308 Review – A Modern Battle Rifle?"--Ammo Land. A long stroke pistol design that uses an AR-10 style lower, and a stock similar to the ACR. The author notes:

Good open-tip match-grade ammo would undoubtedly tighten those groups further, but even a 2.25 MOA group isn’t bad at all. I think you could run it as a DMR, but it would probably function best as a battle rifle. This isn’t due to inherent accuracy limitations, but rather to the inherent characteristics of the long-stroke gas piston system, which is where the gun truly excels. 

• "Old (Un)reliable: Finding a Magazine that Works for Your 1911"--American Rifleman. Some advice to a reader that is having issues with certain types of rounds not feeding reliably. Thus, there is a discussion of magazine maintenance and different types of followers for specific types of bullet profiles. 
• "Magpul’s Modified Coyote Brown"--The Truth About Guns.  A new color that is slightly darker than its usual Flat Dark Earth. 
• "IEDs Found in the Carson National Forest"--American Rifleman. A warning that it isn't just aggressive animals that hikers and hunters need to watch out for. The article mentions the destructive devices found in Carson National Forest in New Mexico, the risk of running across pot plantations and meth labs, and that "[o]n July 16, 2026, two female U.S. Forest Service biologists were kidnapped and held hostage on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest." 
•  The return of the pen light: "The Streamlight Wedge SL: EDC Done Right"--The Truth About Guns. This is about the size and shape of a partially used carpenter's pencil, so it carries flat in the pocket. It features three output settings: 50 lumens on Low, 100 lumens on High, and a 500-lumen THRO mode. It is rechargeable. As the author notes, "not every flashlight needs to be tactical. Tactical lights today produce ridiculous amounts of light. That’s great if you’re searching a backyard, clearing a building, or trying to identify someone at a distance. ... [But] [f]or most day-to-day tasks, all of that light can be too much." I carry an old Olight EOS that I have on my key chain for my EDC flashlight--it uses a single AAA and it twists to come on. Not tactical but it does 90% of the things for which I need a flashlight. It would be nice to have something with more throw at times. But I continue with my old, beat up EOS because it is easy to have on me (I almost always have my keys) and not something I'm likely to forget. 
• "Six Days to Anarchy: Silent Weapons for Urban Collapse"--The Truth About Guns.  The author argues for three silenced weapons: a .300 BLK carbine/SBR, a duty pistol, and a .22 pistol. But what caught my attention was the hypothesized cause of collapse:

     Six days.

    That’s the timeline investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen lays out in Biological Warfare: A Scenario for a biological incident to move from outbreak to anarchy and insurrection.

    Not six months. Not six weeks.

    Six days.

    Jacobsen recently discussed that scenario on the Shawn Ryan Show, and one of the more interesting things she brought up wasn’t simply how deadly a biological weapon could be. It’s what happens when fear of infection begins to break down the systems we normally depend on.

     According to Jacobsen, declassified government material repeatedly raises the concern that fear of infection could send the United States spiraling into “anarchy and insurrection.” In the scenario she constructed from her reporting, it takes less than a week to get there.

    Most of us tend to think about preparedness as something with a little runway. You see the storm coming. You watch things getting worse. Then you make a few last-minute runs for food, water, batteries, fuel, medicine, and whatever else you should have bought months ago.
    
    Six days doesn’t give you much of that.

    If something capable of causing that level of disruption ever happened, there probably isn’t going to be time to get your shit together once it starts.

    You either did it beforehand, or you didn’t.

But the fear of the epidemic was the key reason for collapse under the scenario:

     Jacobsen boils a biological threat down to three basic questions: How does it spread? How deadly is it? And is there a medical countermeasure?

    Now imagine nobody has reliable answers.

    People don’t know who is infected. They don’t know exactly how the pathogen spreads. They don’t know whether the information coming from the government is accurate. They don’t know whether there is enough medicine to go around.

    Later in the interview, Jacobsen walks through a scenario involving a limited supply of a perceived medical countermeasure and a population desperate to get it. Law enforcement and first responders face the same exposure risks as everyone else; government resources are stretched thin, and thousands of people are trying to get their hands on something they believe could save their families.

    At that point, you don’t just have a biological emergency.

    You have scared, desperate people competing for limited resources. 

The article links to the video of the interview as well as a video from Garand Thumb on urban collapse and operating in an urban collapse as well as containing more details on his reasoning for each type of silenced weapon, why 6 days is not enough time to prepare, and the importance of keeping a low profile.

• "Retired cop shares inexpensive items everyone should keep in their home to save them from intruders"--Daily Mail. Recommendations to have door braces, door wedge alarms, carrying pepper spray and a personal alarm when walking or jogging, a faraday bag to protect someone copying the signal from your car fob (but also keep the fob near your bed so you can set off the alarm if you have an intruder); as well as a recommending that single women purchase a pair of used, sort of beat up men's work boots, to put outside the door of a house or apartment (remembering to bring them in at times and move them around) to make it look like a man lived in the residence.