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2014 SHOT Show – Magpul Industries

January 26, 2014 by 3 Comments

Duane Liptak of Magpul was interviewed by the folks over at Arfcom about the new products they were releasing at the SHOT Show. The one that immediately caught my eye was the PMag for the AK-47. If it is as reliable as the steel mags from the Eastern Bloc nations, they will have a winner on their hands.

Liptak said that they didn’t release many no products this SHOT Show due to the relocation and he wouldn’t be giving any sneak peaks. However, he did say that Magpul would be releasing a number of new products over the coming year even as they relocate to Wyoming and Texas.

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Off Topic But A Nice Story

January 26, 2014 by 2 Comments

I was sitting in bed this morning, drinking my first cup of coffee, and watching CBS Sunday Morning when a story by Steve Hartman came on. When they first flashed the preview of the story something about that school logo triggered something in my subconscious.

A few words into the story and I knew why that logo triggered something. It was the logo from my alma mater! One does not expect to see a story on TV about their old high school unless it is the scene of a tragedy. This is especially true when it is a small school located in the Piedmont of North Carolina located midway between Greensboro and Winston-Salem.

Hartman’s story is about a cancer survivor who is playing the game in memory of a friend who also had cancer but didn’t make it. The players on the boy’s basketball team were asked to pick someone to dedicate the game to and junior Spencer Wilson picked Josh Reminger who had died nine months earlier.

I’ll let Steve Hartman tell the rest of the story.

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Whats More Dangerous Than Ghost Guns?

January 24, 2014 by 6 Comments

Despite what St. Sen. Kevin de Leon (R-LA) might think, ghost ships are more dangerous than ghost guns.

The Russian cruise ship Lyubov Orlova is now drifting around the North Atlantic crewed only by thousands of cannibal rats. It is thought to be heading towards the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The cruise ship was impounded in the Canadian province of Newfoundland back in 2010 over unpaid debts. Eventually the crew and passengers were sent home to Russia and the ship was to be towed to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped.


The Belfast Telegraph reports that after the tug towing the Lyubov Orlova broke its towing hawser, Transport Canada sent another boat to tow it out to sea and abandon it.

Sending the ship off into international waters, Transport Canada said it was satisfied the Lyubov Orlova “no longer poses a threat to the safety of [Canadian] offshore oil installations, their personnel or the marine environment”.

Since then the ship has been drifting and its location seems unknown despite satellite photos and search planes. Salvage hunters are anxious to find the ship for it as it has a scrap value of somewhere around $1 million. That said, the rats are a concern as is its eventual landfall. The Irish are calling it a biohazard and are angry at the Canadians for just letting it drift towards them.

From the National Post:

The chief of the Irish Coast Guard is expressing frustration with Canadian authorities for their February decision to send a derelict, rat-infested “biohazard” bobbing toward the Emerald Isle.

“It was over 10 days from when it went missing to when we were told about it,” Irish Coast Guard director Chris Reynolds told the Irish Independent this week. “We would have been much happier if they told us much earlier.”

“We could have sank it or towed it in for salvage.”…

That, and untold swarms of rats. Before its ill-advised tow into the North Atlantic, the Lyubov Orlova spent two years tied up in St. John’s harbour, virtually guaranteeing its status as a floating rat colony.

Or, as Mr. Reynolds called it, a “biohazard.”

“We don’t want rats from foreign ships coming onto Irish soil. If it came and broke up on shore, I’m sure local people wouldn’t be very happy about it,” Mr. Reynolds told the Irish Independent.

A much greater danger than Newfoundland rats, however, is the prospect of the Lyubov Orlova looming out of the fog and obliterating an Irish freighter or fishing vessel.

“For us, the big danger is something hitting it,” Mr. Reynolds told the BBC. “It can bump into something, or more likely, something can bump into it in the middle of the night in the Atlantic.”

 I don’t know about you but I find a ghost ship filled with cannibal rats much more scary than an unserialized hunk of aluminum. Or as the Brits and Irish would say, aluminium.

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2014 SHOT Show – Gov. Rick Perry

January 24, 2014 by

The 2014 SHOT Show brought a lot of people to Las Vegas including Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX). While he doesn’t say so in the video below, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he was doing some industrial recruiting while in Las Vegas.

I’m sorry that Perry blew up in the 2012 GOP race for president. While he might not have been able to name a third cabinet department he would cut, I think he does have a good understanding of what businesses need to succeed unlike the current occupant of the Oval Office.

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Code Pink

January 24, 2014 by 4 Comments

Just like everything in Zombie Green, I think the whole “pink guns for girls” thing is getting a bit overdone. There is nothing wrong with a woman wanting a gun in pink…or emerald green or lavender or even in the Pantone color of the year, radiant orchid. But to automatically assume that a gun has to be in bubblegum pink to attract female buyers is just utter nonsense.

I realize that I’m not the only one who believes that. My views on pink guns was reinforced by a column in today’s Shooting Wire written by Laurel Yashimoto. Laurel is a law enforcement officer in Southern California and was a first time attendee at this year’s SHOT Show. Among her comments about being a first time SHOT Show visitor she said this:

The only thing that really gave me pause was constantly being handed something pink. My favorite color is green, but being female means that the one pink item in the booth will eventually end up in my hands. After a few of these surprising color-coded encounters, I concluded that if it goes, “bang!” fast and accurately, I don’t really care what color it is. It was sweet that men tried to include women by making something in a color they hoped the ladies would like. Kind of like when the birds on the NatGeo do the crazy mating dances. It may not be sexy, but it’s nice to know guys care. And no, much to my disappointment, I did not see a pink weapon mounted lighting system.

I love the comparison to bird’s mating dances from the NatGeo channel. Just like some of those mating dances that look rather ridiculous, I think assuming that using pink is the only way to attract a woman to a firearm is equally ridiculous. 

I think a better way might be to take the example of Taurus and build your marketing efforts around a strong, confident woman shooter like Jessie Duff. Not only does she have Hollywood starlet good looks but she is also a USPSA Grand Master shooter. It just seems to me that this would have a better chance of success while really being a lot more respectful of women.

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S&W Joins Ruger In Leaving California Market

January 23, 2014 by 4 Comments

Smith & Wesson has officially announced today that they are letting their M&P series of semi-automatic pistols drop off the California Department of Justice Handgun Roster. For the time being, the M&P Shield and the SDVE pistols will remain on the roster as the company plans no changes to these pistols and they were added to the list prior to the beginning of 2014.

What I would like to see and, I think most would agree, is for S&W along with Ruger, Glock, and any other supplier of pistols to the law enforcement market in California take the Ronnie Barrett approach to this. That is, if it can’t be sold to individuals in California then it won’t be sold to law enforcement either. Barrett went further and stopped providing spare parts and repairs as well. 

The official statement from Smith & Wesson courtesy of the Outdoor Wire is below:

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (January 23, 2014) — Smith & Wesson Corp. announced today that although it continually seeks ways to refine and improve its firearms so that consumers have access to the best possible products, the State of California is making that impossible when it comes to California residents.

Under California’s “Unsafe Handgun Act,” any new semi-automatic pistol introduced into that state must comply with microstamping laws. In addition, California asserts that anything other than a cosmetic change to a handgun already on the California Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale, including performance enhancements and other improvements, requires it to be removed from the roster and retested. For semi-automatic pistols, this means it must comply with the microstamping requirements, as well.

Smith & Wesson does not and will not include microstamping in its firearms. A number of studies have indicated that microstamping is unreliable, serves no safety purpose, is cost prohibitive and, most importantly, is not proven to aid in preventing or solving crimes. The microstamping mandate and the company’s unwillingness to adopt this so-called technology will result in a diminishing number of Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistols available for purchase by California residents.

This is not a problem unique to Smith & Wesson. The microstamping legislation and California’s position regarding performance enhancements and other improvements creates the same challenge for all firearm manufacturers, since presumably all of them refine and improve their products over time.

Smith & Wesson currently produces a California-compliant version of its M&P® Shield and SDVE™ pistols. Both of these new products were launched last week at SHOT Show® in Las Vegas and are expected to begin shipping within 90 days. They are expected to more than offset the impact of those M&P pistol models that will not remain on the Roster. Both the M&P Shield and the SDVE pistols are expected to remain on the California Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale as long as no changes are made to those models and the company does not plan to make changes to them for this reason. All other Smith & Wesson handguns are at risk of eventually falling off the roster over time. The company expects that any current production revolvers that fall off will be re-tested and returned to the roster, since microstamping does not apply to revolvers. Without some change in position by California, however, any semi-automatic pistols (other than the California-compliant models referenced above) that are removed from the roster will not be returned and law-abiding citizens will not be permitted to buy them from a licensed dealer in California.

James Debney, Smith & Wesson President & CEO, said, “As our products fall off the roster due to California’s interpretation of the Unsafe Handgun Act, we will continue to work with the NRA and the NSSF to oppose this poorly conceived law which mandates the unproven and unreliable concept of microstamping and makes it impossible for Californians to have access to the best products with the latest innovations. At the same time, we will do our best to support our customers in California with state-compliant products, enabling them access to at least a portion of the firearms to which we believe all citizens are entitled. In these challenging times, we hope you will support Smith & Wesson, and all gun manufacturers, in our fight to make the Unsafe Handgun Act about safety. We also encourage you to support the NSSF’s lawsuit and other efforts to stop microstamping, before it impacts your Constitutional rights.”

Unless California changes its position, all M&P pistols other than the M&P Shield, will fall off the roster by August, 2014, due to performance enhancements and other improvements we have made to those firearms. This includes the M&P9c, which has fallen off already and several other M&P models that will fall off by the end of this month. Other models already have fallen off and will continue to fall off for the same reason. Visit http://oag.ca.gov/sites/oag.ca.gov/files/pdfs/firearms/removed.pdf each week for a list published by the California Department of Justice of the handguns no longer on the roster.

California firearms dealers should check the official California Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale frequently, to determine which handguns are certified for sale in California. This list can be found at http://certguns.doj.ca.gov/.