Take Dad Out To The Range

In a simple exchange last week, I took my dad to the local golf driving range as he's a big golf aficionado (I'm really not), and the next day we went to the shooting range.

While I love my dad dearly, he's a product of his environment - with a very liberal, Canadian, anti-gun outlook which has very much been driven by the media etc.

With his age of 77, there is no point arguing it with him, he's not going to change his views, and getting into a heated argument, which is where we tend to end up would have spoiled the day if not the whole visit. 

In short I've finally learned not to fall into that particular no-win situation.  Only took 48 years to figure it out, but yay me.

As such, I declined to argue and said let's just go have some fun.

And fun there was to be had.

I met up with Tosh and he brought his family who were visiting from New York to the range.  In contrast to my dad they are big firearms aficionados and looked forward to shooting stuff they can't have in New York.  They live near the PA border in New York.

So we got setup at Range Six as our usual Range 4 was busy. 

We started with some pistols.

I had him start with the suppressed 22 as that's always a nice intro and he had fin with that.  I then had him shot the Beretta 81 and then my Glock with the 509T on it and (gasp! - 15 rounds in the magazine).

Then I got him shooting some more historic pistols, starting with my Romanian Tokarev.

First, since he's Canadian, it was my Inglis Hi Power, which is only a couple years older than he is:

Since he has a washer and dryer at his place made by Inglis it was all rather fitting.  Letting him shoot it with the magazine filled up to the "dangerous" 13 rounds capacity rather than the Canadian legal 10 rounds was a bit of subtlety on my part.  Amazingly, yet absolutely predictably,  nothing bad happened.

Then on to the Colt 1927 - The 1911A1 Colt made for the Argentine Army contract and marked 1927.  This one was older than he was and yep, it still works flawlessly.

He nailed all the plates on the plate rack with both.

I thne had him shoot my suppressed Tavor, and the 300 Blackout pistol with the suppresor on it, and let Tosh's family shoot all the pistols and rifles as well.

We all had a good time at the range, which is what it's all about.

NRA Convention Day 3

Yes this post disappeared so I'm going to try and recreate it by memory. Quick word to the wise: Never have blogger editor running on two devices. So, here goes.

So we got up, had some breakfast and headed to the Convention. We met all the usual suspects in the media room and then headed out on the floor.

First we went and paid homage to Dillon Precision, the manufacturer of the finest reloading equipment bar none.

I thanked them for their excellent customer service and products. My Dillon 550B is about 20 years old and still going strong.

Then we went for another Tour de FN.

The FN rep spent considerable time with us talking over, and talking up, the merits of the PS90, the SCAR and the FNS pistol.

He gave me a very detailed overview of the PS90, including operation and maintenance.

Apparently I can order it as an SBR from the factory to be shipped to my dealer once the paperwork gets approved. It would be quite the fun little gun to have. Not sure what I'd use it for really, but sometimes just having a fun range toy is reason enough.

The FN rep was an excellent ambassador for FN and he knew their products and importantly knew how to communicate about them, and he certainly moved both FN and the company's products way up on my list as a result.

Next, ML went to Colt to rail at their service guy over their customer service, or lack thereof that he has experienced, and I looked at their firearms. Most of their pistols earned a solid "meh", but this one caught my interest:

That's a Colt Delta Elite. The first ever handgun that I shot in 10mm was a Delta Elite and I have some good memories of shooting it. This one on display however could have used a trigger job, and you'd expect a much nicer trigger that wouldn't need any enhancement from a $1,115 pistol. The Glock 20 beats it terms of capacity, price and ease of trigger adjustment, but it's a Delta Elite, so both primacy and recency still make me want one.

From there we went on to the Glock exhibit and I handled a Glock 30S and a few other Glocks in 45 ACP. I need a Glock in 45. Not sure why, I just do.

Then we stopped by the Remington display and I handled the new R51. They certainly brought a lot of them to the show:

The R51 felt pretty good in the hand and I liked the retro-futuristic look of them, including the blending in of the rear sight to the slide, and the grip safety fit very nicely. However, the trigger was gritty to say the least. Still I kinda want one, no idea what I'd do with it though, may just get one eventually as a sample to add to the collection, but then I'd have to pickup an original model 51 like Tam. The R51 just didn't make my Buy-It-Now-Or-Real-Soon list.

Then I needed to go around and take pictures of some pink guns as the girls requested them, and as a dad I obliged.

Here's some Walther P22s in pink:

Meanwhile, someone had snuck up on the Whitney Wolverine at the Olympic Arms booth and painted it flourescent pink:

Ok, it's not actually the same gun as I saw on Day One, but that's one very pink pistol.

At Walther we also saw the new Walther CCP, Walther's Concealed Carry Pistol. My picture of it didn't work out, so go check it out on Roberta X's blog and Tam's picture that she posted after this post originally went up. It's a delayed gas blowback pistol and is both slim and visually appealing with a smooth trigger both surface and pull, along with an easy to use thumb safety. Racking the slide is really easy due to the lighter spring, and I can see this having a definite appeal to those with hand strength issues who want a smaller slim and shootable pistol and not a revolver. The gun fit like a glove in my hand, and doesn't have the squared off block appearance of the Walther PPS. I certainly wouldn't mind trying it out once it's out on the market. If it is competitively priced and the design proves robust and effective, it should do well.

Then we headed to the seminar that was perhaps the most important and informative of all the seminars that were held at the convention.

Happy 1911 Day!

On this day in history, one of the finest handguns even designed was adopted as the sidearm of the US Military.

Designed by John Moses Browning (firearms genius par excellence), it is a design that has endured over a hundred years and stood the test of time.

Since many a fine blogger is showing off their 1911s today, I figured better late evening than never.

My oldest 1911: A Colt Model 1927:

This Colt, a Model 1927 is one of 10,000 Model 1911A1s Colt manufactured for the Argentine Army. It bears the Argentine Army's inscription: Ejercito Argentino.

Argentina later manufactured their own Model 1927s under license from Colt:

This one a Sistema Colt 1927 was manufactured by DGFM-FMAP (Direccion General de Fabricaciones Militares-Fabrica Militar de Armas Portatiles) in Argentina for the Argentine Air Force and so marked. Please pardon the very non-standard grips which came with it which shall be changed back to their original grips as soon as a set are found to restore this pistol properly.

I should note I had a ridiculous time when I bought this pistol. The seller resided in New York and the New York gun dealers claimed this could not be a Curio and Relic pistol because it looked too nice. Seriously that was the reason he was given. As always gun dealers don't always know their regs. So in the face of stupid refusal, I had to have it shipped to my friendly FFL rather than my own C&R license.

You'll note that the Argentinians went metric: 11.25 mm doesn't have quite the same ring as .45 ACP, but its still a beauty.

Finally there's my go-to .45:

This 1911A1 is an Essex Arms frame and slide with a mix of Wilson Combat, Colt, and Sistema parts. Long story, but when I moved from Toronto to Michigan I wasn't allowed to import my beautiful 1927 Ejercito Argentino (Argentine Army marked) Sistema as it was "military" due to the Ejercito marking. A Sistema that was police marked or unmarked would have been just fine, go figure. Never-mind that I was allowed to import my S&W Model 29 which is certainly a far more powerful handgun but so it went. I had to strip the poor gun down, turn in the stripped receiver in Toronto and was then able to legally import the parts. Yes, I'm still annoyed all these years later.

This gun was then built by gunsmith Alan Tillman as a serviceable carry / competition gun for someone on a very meager student budget at the time, and it reflects some cosmetic compromises in exchange for more attention to accuracy and reliability. Mr. Tillman did an excellent job indeed.

I've used it in Massad Ayoob's LFI I and LFI II classes to excellent effect and it is one of my favorite carry guns. It now needs some new night sites as the current ones have dimmed down to standard irons. It could probably also use a refinishing, but it is still a rock-solid and reliable firearm.

I still need an Argentine Navy marked Sistema to round out the Argentine armed forces 1927 collection, and really would like a WWII US 1911A1, but that will take some time to save up for.

So, Happy 1911 Day and enjoy the enduring legacy of the 1911 series of pistols.

There's at least one out there to meet everyone's need and budget and no firearms collection is complete without at least one example of this excellent pistol.

This Old Colt - A Colt Official Police Revolver

I just acquired this Colt Official Police Revolver.









Made in 1956, it has proudly served the Hamtramck Police Department in Michigan until now. Hamtramck is a city with a majority Polish population that is almost completely surrounded by the City of Detroit. While the revolver is unmarked, it was acquired by my friendly local FFL from the Police department in a trade and now this .38 special revolver rests in my collection.

It has some good, honest holster wear and clearly has seen some use but that's all real character wear and it is in nice condition with perfect cylinder timing and a nice crisp trigger and has the original Colt grips.

First made in 1927, the Colt Official Police Revolver was one of the best selling firearms for police of all time, with over 400,000 produced. Made during the time when police were transitioning from .32 to .38 special, the Colt quickly gained a following, especially as it could handle the heavier .38-44 loads that comparable Smith and Wesson revolvers could not. The pistol also served in World War 2 as the Colt Commando and was produced for then British in .38-200 caliber.

There's a few interesting features that readily distinguish the Colt revolvers' operation from Smith and Wesson's guns.

First, the cylinder release on a Colt works by pulling it back toward the grip. On the Smith you push it forward to open the cylinder.

More importantly, the Colt cylinder revolves in a clockwise fashion while the Smith rotates counter-clockwise. This is important if you have less than 6 cartridges to load and want to make sure your first shot goes bang rather than click. It is also an important feature to keep in mind if you're dumb enough to play Russian roulette.

This blog of course is completely against people doing such a stupid thing and recommends that you find some non-firearm method of removing yourself from the gene pool if you really are dumb enough to try Russian roulette for real to prevent your death being one used by the media and antis against responsible gun owners. You have been warned.

The Colt Official Police fits the hand well with the sights lining up nicely when raised. The rampant colt on the grips and on the frame memorialize when Colt was the top name in American firearms. Now outdated in terms of stopping power and capacity and replaced in policeman's holsters by higher capacity, more ergonomic polymer semi-autos, the Colt Official Police takes us back in time to when officers with revolvers on their hips and far less technology and resources than the officers of today have patrolled the streets to keep them safe. A nice piece of American history indeed.