Les Jones

Guns > Thursday Gun Links #28

Now that I'm slacking off on the weekly gun links due to the upcoming bambino
Freedom Sight is launching The Weekly Fusillade, a weekly roundup of gun links. He has a form for automatic submission, which is a smart idea. Via Publicola.

Speaking of slacking, I'm still posting this week because I have a backlog of material, but I've promised myself I'll skip next week. After that, I have some reviews and some excellent lever gun links.

People are asking questions about the death of Ohio CCW holder Bill Singleton after the Cleveland Plain Dealer vindictively published Singleton on a list of CCW holders. Via Publicola (scroll down to August 5th).

Posse Incitatus has a Ruger Bisley review. Via Jeff Soyer.

The Heckler &Koch G11 and caseless ammunition Via SayUncle. I had no idea it came so close to adoption, or that caseless ammo development was pursued commercially so recently.

.308 Kaboom caused by reloading mistake.

New Reviews from GunBlast

• Smith &Wesson 1911 Scandium.
• Magazine loader for Ruger Mark II, 22/45, and Browning Buckmark pistols.
• The new Ruger P345.
• Bushmaster .308 rifle
• Freedom Arms .475 Limbaugh

Quotes

Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe. That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary.
- Lee Harris, Civilization and Its Enemies

The .357 Magnum Cartridge

"No automatic cartridge is as powerful as the .357 Magnum........Years ago I stated that if I could have only one gun, it would be a Model 27 S&W."
- Elmer Keith

Ala Dan at The High Road asks about hot .357 factory loads.

Comparison of .357 ammo.

You know how .357s have a lot of muzzle blast and flash when fired from a revolver? With a rifle that powder gets burned inside the barrel, converting what would be muzzle blast into as much as 50% more muzzle velocity, bringing the .357 up to rifle cartridge speed:

From a 4 inch S&W revolver:
Item 19C/20-158gr. Gold Dot = 1485 fps
Item 19D/20-125gr. Gold Dot = 1603 fps

From an 18.5 inch Marlin rifle:
Item 19C/20-158gr. Gold Dot = 2153 fps
Item 19D/20-125gr. Gold Dot = 2298 fps

Jim Taylor's .357 magnums I have known. Includes data on the .357 as a rifle load.

Your Weekly Flame War

.357 Magnum, .44 Magnum, or .30-30 for Deer?

Gun Pic of the Week: the Gun that Killed Mussolini

More below...

Director of Albania's National Historical Museum Moikom Zeqo shows the French automatic rifle, used by Italian guerillas to execute former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on April 28, 1945, at the museum in Tirana, Wednesday, Aug. 4 2004. The 1938, 7.65 calibre rifle was gifted in 1957 to the former communist regime in Albania, by Valter Audisio, one of the eight Italian partisans charged with executing the fascist dictator Il Duce. This is the first time the weapon has been seen in public since the fall of communism in Albania.

As you can make out from the picture, the MAS submachine gun has a "bent" appearance. In Illustrated Firearms of the World, Ian Hogg writes: "This also has an odd look about it, because the axis of the barrel and of the body and stock are divergent by several degrees, giving the weapon a peculiarly "bent" look. The reason for this was that for the sake of compactness of the body, the bolt had to recoil inside a tube let into the buttstock; and since the butt had to 'drop' to give a natural aiming stance, the receiver had to be re-aligned. As a result, the face of the bolt is cut obliquely so that although it approaches the breech at an angle it closes evenly on the cartridge."

Posted by lesjones