The Sharps Model of 1874

 The Sharps is probably the most famous of the old west rifles that was the least made. It's roots were in a percussion breechloading rifle used in the War of Northern Aggression by the Blue, before the development of the brass reloadable cartridge. The Sharps model of 1848 was not liked by the big brass of the Army, it was too easy to fire quickly and the high brass feared that the troops would waste ammunition. It was also much more costly to make that the muzzle loaders of the day. Only the Berdan Sharpshooter 1st and 2nd Regiments were issued these rifles although a few other volunteer outfits bought them. I sometime wonder how much the war would have been shortened had the government gone ahead and spent the money for the more expensive rifles for all the troops.

 Oh, the word Sharpshooter had nothing to do with the fact that they shot the Sharps, it's derived from the German, "scharfschutze" long before Christian Sharps was ever born.

 Post Civil War and the Great Westward Expansion there were two major stumbling blocks in  the way, the American Bison and the "Indian" tribes. There were simply no fences that could stop a buffalo herd from going where it wished, eating and trampling crops and causing domestic cows to join the herds. not to mention the odd notions of the tribes thinking they had the rights to the land.

 The Army having pee-poor luck at corralling the tribes the idea came along to exterminate the buffalo and the Great Slaughter began. It started slow with just a few hunters supplying meat for the railroad crews building the rails 'cross the plains,  then someone figured out how to tan the hides of the great shaggy beasts and make the leather for the drive belts of the great factories of America.

The Sharps factory started converting it's percussion rifles to cartridge soon after the war but between 1869 and 1871 they start making what became known as the 1874. It doesn't have to make sense, it started when there was no model number. It was only later when they started calling it the 1874, when they developed another, less popular, model, the model of 1877.

The Sharps was initially chambered in .40 and .44 calibers in two lengths and then, soon in .45 and .50 calibers. The initial cartridges were bottle necked, only later did they discover that bottle necked cartridges stocked with black powder give accuracy destroying hard fouling just in front of the case neck. We still aren't sure exactly why. At any rate the forty caliber cartridges were mostly for target and hunting smaller game, few thought they were big enough for buffalo, elk and the great bears of the West. We call the cartridges today by their caliber and powder charge, ie. .44-77, .45-70, etc. Back then they called them by the caliber and case length, .44, 2 1/4, and 45-2.1 No matter what you called them the old buffalo rounds flung a chunk of lead weighing an ounce or more at something over the speed of sound.

 When the Army developed the .45-70 round it soon became popular in the Sharps, also, as well as the previous government cartridge, the .50-70.  Hunters discovered there was little difference between the .44 and .45 calibers but the fifties showed a marked increase in killing power. There were two cartridges in .50 caliber, the .50-70 and .50-90. Both were referred to as the Big Fifty. The .50-90  was the rifle a feller named Billy Dixon picked up at the battle of Adobe Walls in  June of 1874.  Twenty-eight buffalo hunters and traders held of some 700 odd Comanches and Kiowas. A hunter, late famous scout. Billy shot a Medicine Man off is horse at a later surveyed distance of 1538 yards. Dixon later won the Medal of Honor at the Buffalo Wallow fight as an Army scout.

 The Sharps Company was essentially a custom shop in it's heyday, making it's rifles essentially to order  A buffalo gun was usually heavy,  at least twelve pounds, going up to as much as twenty to reduce recoil over long strings of shots.Barrels were usually octagonal, thirty inches or so long.If memory serves 34 or 36 was the maximum offered.  Double set triggers were an extra cost option but were usually ordered. The standard sights were a buckhorn rear and a post front ut almost all the ones shipped to the buffalo hunters went with tang rear and globe front sights, or the telescopic sights of the day. 

  A Sharps fitted for the buffalo range would cost two months wages of a factory worker, three times that with a telescope. Yet a hunter with a crew of skinners could make that in two days. A bufflo running crew would consist of one or more hunters, at least two skinners per hunter and a cook. 

 Sharps were not the only buffalo gun of the west, there were a lot of Trapdoor Springfields, Remington Rolling Blocks and Ballards out there, too but the Sharps is the most famous. 

The great buffalo herds were wiped out by the time anyone built a lever action repeater strong enough for the buffalo cartridges By then Sharps had closed it's doors, literally having killed the reason for it's being. They like to say that Winchester was the gun that won the west. Sharps made the west safe for Winchester. Without the big buffalo cartridges the anemic Winchester shooters would have been trampled into mush. 

What Changed?

 I've kept quiet about the Newtown massacre while I tried to figure out what happened. Meanwhile the usual suspects have been howling about guns. There have been hundreds of people spouting off about killing the NRA President and members. Aside from this not being particularly nonviolent I would posit that threatening armed people might just be a mistake.

 I have found a couple of strange things about this most recent massacre, one is that the Congress and the President have let a couple of school safety programs lapse, one funding police in schools.

 Another odd thing about Newtown is that it took twenty minutes for police to show up from the first calls of shooting inside that school.

 Twenty minutes. That is a pretty good response time for police to show up for a theft report, suspect gone. It might be a pretty fair response time for a deputy sheriff in rural northwest Texas. It is not a good response time for a city police responding to a shooting inside a grade school. Someone should be asking what those police were doing. The average citizen won't like the answer.The day of the first officer on the scene running to the sound of the gunfire is long over. Today we "establish a perimeter." We set up a chain of command. We establish a line of communication. We gather intelligence. We then wait for the heavily armored SWAT types to go in and only then does the shooter kill himself.

 I admit, I've never been to Newtown and have no idea of the terrain. I will say that it is damned well impossible to believe that the nearest patrol car was twenty minutes away.

 One of the reasons these killing sprees happen is that police no longer have commanders, they have administrators. Their key philosophy is to make sure that no blame redounds to themselves.And an ijured or killed police officer is a real drain on the municipal budget whereas a dead child does not financially affect the city.

 An important question: How many police have been killed or injured during one of these killing sprees since Columbine? Hint: More police have been killed or injured protecting government motorcades. Police administrators have forgot the addage of shedding blood to take the King's shilling. We spend a lot of money on officer safety, as we should. In reponse, the officers go into dangerous situations. Still, it seems the more we spend on officer safety the longer it takes said officers to actually do something useful when there is shooting going on. This is not the fault of the officers but is the fault of the administrators.

 Please note that I am not calling for a bloodbath in police work. I am saying that many lives would be saved by having those first officers go in and cause the shooter to kill himself, as almost always happens. I am further saying that the person who goes into policing to be safe had better apply, instead, to city road repair. The life of an officer is not worth more than that of a child. Again, no officers have been killed in all these school massacres since and including Columbine.

 It is, of course, more than poor administration of our police. I grew up in an era where we had a high school rifle team. Kids in Jr. ROTC got to fire fully automatic Browning Automatic Rifles. Many high school principals had large closets where the kids could pack their hunting rifles and shotguns during the seasons.

 A kid with money could write off to one of the advertisors in The American Rifleman and get a lot of really fine rifles, revolvers and pistols. There were 1903 Springfield rifles for around fortty bucks. German Mausers were even cheaper and at the bottom of the barrel were the Japanese 6.5 and 7.7 mm and those Italian 6.5 and 7.7s. There were M1 rifles and M 1 Carbines, both .30 caliber  but the M 1 fired the full sized .30-06 and the Carbine a hot pistol-type thing with a lighter bullet. As I recall, that was the round Charles Whitman used, mostly, in the Texas Tower massacre. There were thousand of the old British .303 let go, tons of .45 auto M1911 pitols, Webley revolvers in both .455 Brit and .38 S&W were cheap, along with bazillions of Colt and S&W .38s both .38 Special and .38 S&W.

 Yet we boys settled our differences with fists. And that is a big difference. Today a kid fistfight is pretty much beyond the pale. And THAT is a big difference. Somehow we have allowed education to be feminized. Recesses are almost gone, with none of the physical games boys of my day played. Today a child with normal boyish energy is medicated. He's no longer a boy but is hyperactive or has A.D.D. So, today they sit around, numb and playing games on their mobile phones. Or texting.

 I live where cell phone coverage is very spotty. The largest man made lake inside Texas is a half mile away by the trail kids (or adults) can walk. It teems with catfish and bass. It is a small game hunter's paradise. Our back roads are great for bicycles, we have lots of horses. Yet when I drive home after school hours I see kids standing around, in the spots where they can get coverage, with cell phones in both hands, not even looking up as cars go by. What do these boys do with their energy? And our "betters" blame the fast food industry.

 My own grandsons aren't allowed to roam. Kids are on such short leashes today and it's a crying shame.

 Most, if not all, of the people doing these spree shootings were on some sort of psychotropic drug. Something is really wrong and it ain't the guns. We've always had guns. We've had high capacity semioauto guns since the 1903 Winchester .32 and 35 self loading cartridges. Then in 1907 we got the more capable .351 and in 1910 the .401 Winchester SL. These stubby little carbines had short magazines from the factory although when I was a boy I knew an old bluesuit who had a .401 with a long mag he'd either cobbled together or bought. Of course far more LEOs had lever action carbines in .44 WCF and .38WCF. Few carried the longer .30WCF (.30-30) or .32 Special. Many carried 92 Winchesters converted to .38 Special and .357 Mag.

 My own Marlin .357, made in the mid 1970s spent some ten years in a county cruiser, far more useful in the country than a patrol shotgun. But, that's another story. It's just we've always had guns. And if we ban certain guns criminals and madmen will just use another form of gun. Suppose there was some kind of magic spell to remove all semi auto handguns? And it would take a magic spell, there are far too many for a law to get rid of them. After all, tell me again how people get heroin andcocaine wheen there are draconian laws about them.

 Still, without those dread semiautos, what could the Newtown killer do? Well, he could have shot his way in with one or two revolvers and then used gasoline bombs. How many one quart molotov cocktails can fit in a backpack?

 It ain't the guns, folks. We're doing things seriously wrong today and we're looking at the wrong things for solutions.

Wax Practice Bullets

 A valuable art is being lost today, I haven't seen a trace of it since around 1970 or so. That art is making wax bullets for close range practice.It was old in the late fifties when I first saw it when I was barely able to shoot a double action revolver without first cocking it.

 I had intended on providing pictures for this but. alas, my computer problems continue so I will have to make do with word pictures. Still, it ain't rocket surgery so, here goes:

 First of all, why wax bullets? Well, most folks can't shoot in the basement or hallways with real ammo, the holes through the house tend to offend the spouses. And those real bullets can punch through a lot of walls, even if they don't tear out the plumbing or the wiring they tend to drastically reduce the resale price of the house and, if you're a renter, boy, howdy, just think of the reference you'd get from your landlord.

 Back when holsters weren't all full of stuff to make it difficult for a bad guy to snatch the weapon* people used to actually practice the fast draw. There is a slight problem with practicing the fast draw, it takes thousands of repetitions and with live ammo that is very expensive. Not to mention that there is a real danger of being quick on the trigger and slow on the draw. Now that's bad enough with a strong side hip holster, back in the day there were quite a few would be gunmen with serious limps, especially those who were then just barely smart enough to become stable hands or whiskey drummers. It's even worse today with all those in the pants holsters.

 Anyhow, wax bullets are actually quite accurate up to around five or seven yards. The late Bill Jordan, after a career in the US Marine Corps and the Border Patrol back when that was a gun fighting outfit, became the Southwestern Rep of the NRA. Among other things did did shooting exhibitions. He was shown hitting aspirin tablets and then those little bitty saccharin tablets. In his shows he would pick a girl out of the audience and get her to hold one of those tin pie plates out and then, as he was talking he'd draw his S&W Model 19, fire and put a hole in the middle of the pie plate. Then, in his deep Louisiana drawl he'd say "Mam. you showed great courage there. Po' judgement but great courage."

 Anyhow, primer powered wax bullets are a great and inexpensive practice tool and they're things you can actually shoot in town without the SWAT people showing up. You can even shoot them in your house. If your neighbors are close and your walls thin, turn up the stereo!

 You will need some empty cartridge cases for your gun and a way to decap the spent cases. Now if you already handload ammo this is easy, you just decap them on your loading press. If you don't have a loading press you can go several ways, the cheapest is a block of wood, plastic or metal with a primer sized hole drilled through, Set the case with the primer over the hole and tap it out with a blunted nail through the flash hole. I used a Lee Loader for a couple of years, a Lee Loader is available in most handgun (and rifle) cartridges and, for less than thirty bucks most places. And they make serviceable ammunition, too, Hint: A Lee Loader, a one pound canister of powder, five hundred bullets and five hundred primers in a surplus military ammo can is a very comforting thing to have squirreled away, just in case.

 You will need to drill out the primer flash holes with a 1/8 drill bit. There is a long, drawn out technical reason for this but just trust me on it.I don't feel like typing it out. Anyhow, first you drill out the flash hole, right though it. Don't kill yourself trying to get the burr out, you drill from the outside in, right through the primer pocket.

 Now you need a box of primers. A thousand small pistol magnum primers for my .38s and .357s cost me about thirty buck last time I bought them, large pistols cost about the same. Primers are something you want to buy local, if possible, there is a twenty dollar HazMat fee for having them shipped. I'm not sure why, there didn't use to be and I haven't read of any gigantic explosions from powder and primers in trucks. Anyhow, a thousand primers is plenty to get started but you'd be surprised at how fast they can go.

 And you will need a couple boxes of canning wax. My supermarket had Gulf Wax, there are other brands and it doesn't matter which. There used to be inserts in some ammo boxes that had four plastic feet that you could cut off and then the cases were simply held by the rim. Those were great but I haven't seen them in a while. Any of the hard plastic inserts will work although you'll have to take a sanding belt or something to the bottom of them. Actually you won't die if you just do 'em one at a time but faster is better in most things.

 And a way to prime the cases. There are cheap and slow ways to do this but the really best way is to use a hand held priming tool from RCBS, Lee or Hornady. I have used the Lee and the RCBS and have read good things about the Hornady. I have worn out a few Lee Priming tools and so now use the RCBS, their lifetime "we'll fix it or replace it" policy is comforting, and I've had to use it. Of course I wore it out back when I was shooting hundreds of rounds per week but still, for the price of postage it wasn't bad.

 So, let's make some practice ammo! Take your block of canning wax and warm it up a little. Note! If you are shooting a short cased round like the 9mm or .380 acp you will need to make a shallow box of some kind, line it with wax paper and melt the wax into a sheet thin enough to not be so thick the case won't go through. Revolver cases like the .38 Special and .357 Mag, .44 Sec and Mag, .45 Colt, etc are long enough to go through the block, you'll want that shallow box later, though.

 Now you have to warm the wax enough to make it a little soft. In the summer you could just sit it in the sun or give it a little time in the microwave, run it under the blow drier, in the winter set it over the heat register, just figure out a way to where you can push the cartridge case through. Here you see the advantage of having a block of cases going through at once. You can push fifty cases through in the same time you can push one case.

 Obviously the case has to go all the way through the wax, otherwise you have fifty cases stuck in a block of wax. Once you've done that take a new pencil or a dowel or something and push the wax bullet down in the case until it stops. Then prime the cases. You must prime the case last so the air in the case doesn't compress when you put the wax bullet in and then the compressed air pushes the bullet out. Wax bullet loads aren't crimped in nothing holds it in except friction. Friction will keep it in there through all kinds of normal, and some abnormal, activities. Now you're ready to shoot!

 The best thing to use as a backstop is a big piece of scrap carpet. Put a big piece of plastic underneath to catch the bullets when they fall. You can actually melt the used bullets in that shallow box, along with the scrap wax from making the bullets and use it over and over again. Line it with wax paper, take the sheet of wax out, peal the paper and, viola!

 Now the only downside is that these wax bullets strike the target low as there is no recoil lifting the muzzle. Take a large sheet of paper and put a target near the top, shoot a group carefully and then use two targets, one to aim at, one to record the hits. Of course for fast draw practice, if you care to do that, it doesn't matter, a situation where a fast draw matters the target is so close that there won't be much difference.

 As you can guess the wax bullets work better, or at least faster, in a revolver. They will work in an autoloader but they will have to be fed in, one at a time into the chamber and then they won't have the whatittakes to eject without racking the slide.  Still, after you prorate the gear, you can practice for less than a nickle a shot. At home.

 Now when using wax practice ammo in town it's very important to shoot it in a place where there is no :real: ammo. That piece of scrap carpet won't stop a service round. Check it twice, then check again. Cleaning the barrel and cylinder (if any) is essential after shooting a batch of these but is very easy. A patch or two with any normal solvent, a dry patch and then an oil patch followed by a dry patch and, you're done.then return the firearm to your preferred state of readiness.

 Try to avoid shooting yourself or your little brother. Those wax bullets raise one big bruise right through a pair of blue jeans.



 *Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Primer And ammunition Prices To Rise At Month's End.

 I was reading around the various gun blogs the other day and saw where the price of primers are going up. And since primers are a vital part of centerfire cartridges, ammo prices will also increase. There are a whole slew of Federal agencies that have been granted no law enforcement powers by the United States Constitution buying bazillions of rounds of fighting ammo. This does make me wonder, just whom are they planning to fight.

 Still, the various ammo and component factories are already at full production. No one is willing to build a new plant until we get our politicians under control. If we can. So, no increase of production, increased demand equals rationing by price.

 So I get paid before the end of the month. I'm buying a mess of primers.I've got plenty of powder, a few hundred pounds of lead. Primers are the key part of a cartridge. The cases can be used multiple times, I have handgun cases I've loaded a dozen times. On or two max loads and then milder loads until the case mouth splits. And with a little care, that's a long time. 

 Powder prices will probably also increase but a big canister will last for a long time.

 I've mine the backstop for spent bullets and dropped them into the cold melting pot. When they finally melt the dirt and any copper jacketing floats to the top and is skimmed off. A fingernail sized lump of wax or bullet lube helps with that. The fluxing agent helps the tin in the bullet alloy stay mixed. Drop the fluxing agent in, stir well and then skim.

 Don't roll your own? Well, get ready for another shortage.

Hodgdon's Eraser 223 And A Couple Of Shotguns

 Toward the beginning of the year the Hodgdon Powder people announced, with great fanfare, a new powder geared toward the high volume semi auto rifle crowd. This powder is the right burning rate for cartridges like the .223 (5.56 NATO) and the .308 (7.62 NATO.) and suchlike cartridges. It's a little fast for my beloved .30-06.

 Hodgdon's literature ballyhoos the fact that this new powder contains a secret ingredient that reduces or eliminates copper jacket fouling. This is a big deal to folks like prairie dog shooters and the military who might find it advantages to be shooting rather than cleaning.

 Now the thing Hodgdon is not saying is that this revolutionary secret ingredient in the powder isn't the first use of such things. A couple of Alliant's powder have it and Ramshot's TAC has something doing the same thing, if not the same "secret ingredient". This isn't to say that such a thing is useless, just that it's not a brand new thing.

 I haven't been into that type of shooting, I've been out of the service for well over forty years and I don't live in Prairie Dog country. So I corespondent with a couple of pals and got some non-advertising  words about it. One Pard claims that he has two .223s one that has a rough barrel that starts losing accuracy after only around fifteen-twenty rounds, the other with a smooth tube that keeps it's accuracy through a three hundred round shoot.  This Pard claims that the rough barrel keeps it's accuracy through a hundred round test and cleans up with only a few patches wet with Sweet's 7.62 solvent where before it was a task cleaning it after only a couple twenty round mags. He also claims that this new Hodgdon powder gets awfully small groups on a paper target.

 Another Pard is a National Match shooter. He shoots the .308 and also reports good accuracy and easier cleaning.

 It's important to note that this, nor any other, powder will clean copper deposits out of a barrel, the chemistry merely helps to resist causing such deposits. Start with a clean tube. In my near dotage I shoot mostly black powder  and lead alloy "boolits" and durned few smokeless rounds except from my .22s. I still have some smokeless though. Mainly for jacketed hollowpont rounds in my defensive guns. Anyhow, if you are a high volume shooting or are simply lazy, give this powder a try, me, I'm waiting for the no-leaning ingredient black powder.

 The Savage Arms people have a couple of new pump shotguns out, geared toward the non wealthy. Each has a short barrel model available for those thinking about slingin' buckshot. Each model is under $300.00. The more interesting to me is the one with the bottom feed, bottom eject receiver like the old Winchester 12 or Ithaca Mod 37. After all, the fewer openings, the fewer chances for junk to get in and tie up the action. This model, with a synthetic stock and rifle-type sights has an MSRP of 270.00

 The other one is a side eject gun like the Mossberg or Remington 870. With that odd pistol grip hanging down and only a bead sight it has an MSRP of $235.00. Each has several variations, including at least one switch-barrel, giving the owner a chance to switch from a bird gun to a defense gun. Anyhow, one can look at www.SavageArms.com There is a real advantage to having at least a couple knock around guns where a scratch or ding won't bring tears.

A Little Of This, Some Of That

 Midway USA has a monthly flyer and you can find them on the Intertoobz.  There are a few real bargains in their monthly sales. This month they have some good practice ammo like .380 brass cased Blazer ammo for $18.75 per fifty and .38 Special American Eagle for $20.49 for fifty. Good prices for some 9mmP and .357 Mag, too. I've never made, nor have I been offered a nickle from any outfit I endorse here, I just know good service and good prices. I've been doing business with Midway since around 1988 or so.

 another mail order outfit I've done a lot of business with is Graf and Sons. I buy my black powder from them and sometimes their prices on any one thing will beat Midway.  Graf's always has a lower shipping and handling charge than Midway but their prices usually runs just a tad more.

 I shoot very little factory ammo, I have a crowded and cramped little room in this house that has my computer on one desk and my reloading gear on the other, components and such on a bunch of steel warehouse shelves we've scrounged.  I do keep a few boxes of factory ammo for the defensive revolvers we live with. On the other hand only one of my .45 (long) Colts has ever had a factory round through the tube and that was because it was picked up from our oldest boy in Arizona. By the time I got home I had dies and components for it, and then the other three never had a factory round. I load my .45 Colt ammo to three levels, depending on what I'm trying to do. I load the revolvers to the ballistics of the original 40 grains of black and a 250-255 grain bullet, meaning anywhere from about 700 feet per second to about 950 fps.  And don't scoff at those 700 fps loads. Shortly after the .45 Colt was issued to the Army back in 1873 they lightened the loads.to equal the .45 S&W round, a 230 grain bullet at around 725. This is the load that conquered the Sioux and Cheyenne and, later, the Apaches. I load these rounds in both black and smokeless to those ballistics, going up to te 900+ loads when I want to play with them. The main difference between my bullets and factory bullets is that mine have a much broader flat point than factory bullets due to the fact that my bullets are cast in a mold that is designed for both handgun and tube magazine rifles and carbines.Sometimes when I'm running about places where handguns are verbotten  I'll toss one of the Colt clones into the console. If I ever have to tag something with one of those big fat soft flat point bullets it will be well and truely tagged. I know it is popular to carry something with which you could fight off an entire platoon without reloading. Horsecrap. If a problem requires that many rounds I'd be dead anyhow.

 These loads also work in my clone of the '92 Winchester. When I get home, though, I clean the thing, adjust the sights and load it up with Hornady XTP JHP bullets over a max load of either Hodgdon's H110 or LilGun. That Brazilian clone will actually move a 300 grain bullet to the same velocity as the old Remington .45-70 300 grain JHP that used to be a big staple in deer camps all over the country in the late 19th and early 20th Century. A big fat hollowpoint at 1900 fps? That'll stop anything up to Bison. And for those critters there are heavier bullets.I don't have the molds but places like Montana Custom bullets sells the heavyweights by the hundreds. Beartooth Bullets goes all the way up to 405 grain gas checked bullets, just in case there is an unexpected Rhino infestation. The 350 grain are really more practical in the .45 Colt case. And I've read that the black bear is coming back to east Texas. I wonder could I grin down a bear like Davey Crockett did?

 I only load black powder in my shotgun rounds so all of the buckshot and slug loads in the house are factory, although I do have a five pound box of Hornady buckshot I can load in my brass shotshell hulls. Shotguns being what they are I can load black powder shotshells and get the same ballistics as smokeless loads. Plus I could hide in the smoke as I reloaded the double barrel.

 There is a twenty dollar per shipment HAZMAT fee for any powder and primers so, except for black powder it usually is more economical to buy those local, except for Black. The mess of regulations and fees for BP make it really expensive to buy local. Now if I only wanted a pound it would be one thing but what handloader has ever been satisfied with one pound of powder?

 Oh, and notice that Graf's has Schuetzen black powder at $2.00 off, only 12.99 a pound. When Linda Lou can move about safely and I go back to Cowboy Action shooting It's no trouble at all to split up a 25 pound case to where everyone gets enough powder to last awhile. Now I do know a couple shooters who can burn up a 25 pound case in a year, most of us aren't nearly wealthy enough to shoot that often. I usually end up with ten pounds at a time, either buying just that amount or splitting up a case.

 If I'm looking to buy components or ammo in person I usually end up at either Southwest Ammunition Supply in Mesquite, Texas. I used to shoot at Gibson's Outpost and buy components there but now that what shooting I do is usually at the range where my Cowboy Action club is located.  Anyhow, if one lives in the Dallas area both those places are worth a visit.

 I usually buy a brick of .22 ammo whenever I slip into Cabella's or Bass Pro Shops. The only wat to have too much .22 ammo is if the steel shelf collapses under the weight. I have two kinds of Remington, some CCI MiniMag hollowpoints, some Winchester and two kinds of Agulia. I'm out of Federal so that's on the list.The stock barrel on my little Ruger will eat anything. The match chamber on the Shilen barrel is somewhat more fussy.It likes the CCI and Remington hollowpoints, oddly the Remington match ammo has a little trouble. It likes the Winchester Power Point ammo better than the hollowpoint. I've never had a bit of trouble with any Federal so far, in either barrel. I have a family of bunnies living under my deck. When they see me they just freeze, thinking I don't see them, even when I say "Hello B'rer Rabbit!" as I walk by. They are my first batch of meals, come the apocalypse.

 We're going to our son in law's graduation ceremony on Friday. Dean is getting his MBA. His bachelor's in in mechanical engineering.  He is gonna be someone important there in the ceremony because he is giving a speech. Linda Lou disremembers  the title he's been given but they don't usually let the class clown give a speech. Otherwise I would have given a lot of them when I was younger. Of course Dean studied, I majored on coeds and beer.

 Our neighbor Patsy is home from the hospital. She had something like a 90 percent blockage in her heart so they put in something called a shunt. I dunno what that is but they had to open her up, stop her heart, put in the implement, restart her heart and, I assume, sew her up. and she's already home. She says she feels a lot better but, due to the tube down her throat she's not eating solid food yet because those tubes hurt. So when I took Trespasser Dog back to her she was eating egg drop soup from the Panda Restaurant in Wills Point. That's another place I like but they don't pay me anything. Well, actually they do. You know that Chinese BBQ chicken on a stick that most Chinese eateries have? They always give me one of them in a bag for the dogs. Because we have a Chinese Pug. See, I can be bought. The usual way to a man's heart is through his stomach or points south.  I'm so durned old that the way to MY heart is through the dog's stomach. Sigh.

 It's a Texas Formal event so I have to wear long pants.

Clean Cartridge

 So I've been busy doing lots of laundry since Steve fixed the washer. Yesterday I pulled the blue jeans and blue jean shorts out of the washer and lo and behold there was an old cartridge laying in the bottom, still damp. I said an ugly word and remembered where I had picked it up while in the frantic cleaning since we got the new shelves. I have loose ca'tridges lyin' around, I recognized that this was a several year old one because it was a semiwadcutter lead alloy bullet that I didn't use anymore. Instead I like the round nosed flat point as those work both in the revolvers and the rifle. Anyhow those who studied the shooting game some thirty+ years or more ago know about how moisture was a big enemy of the primer.

So, anyhow, here was this old, wet cartridge that went through the agitation, spin and rinse cycles, thirty-forty years back it would have maybe been useful in a slingshot but worthless in a firearm. So I stuck it in one of the .45 revolvers, opened the back door and let fly into the ground. I got a loud noise and the ground erupted with the impact of a 255 grain slug at some 850 fps.

 Now I realise that a sample of one does not a big scientifical experiment but still, I remember when we were not even supposed to touch a primer with bare hands for fear that the skin oil would render it inert. It wasn't long ago that a factory round couldn't go through the washer and work, now a five+ year old handload can. Progress.

Fairly New Defense Ammunition

 It's been a while since I talked ammunition for defense and some new stuff has come out since then so...

 Buffalo Bore has some interesting stuff out.  Those who have switched from a short .38 to a .380 Auto will be pleased to know that they have a few loads that will bring that round from "better than no gun at all" to something on which one could bet one's life.

 The first of these is a 100 grain hard cast lead alloy flatnose at around 1150 feet per second. The lead ally has less friction in the bore than jacketed bullets so we get a little more weight at the highest velocities at peak pressures. This round would give the most dependable penetration of any .380 ACP and if a bullet doesn't reach the vitals it's a wasted shot. If I were a serving peace officer carrying a .380 as a backup and off duty gun I would think long and hard about this round.

 Buffalo Bore also makes two jacketed hollow points a 90 and a 95 grain bullet for those that would sacrifice some penetration for a larger diameter hole. From the pictures it looks as if one of these is a Hornady XTP JHP and the other a Speer Gold Dot hollow point. Don't bet the farm on my guess as to the bullets, I'm going by the pictures. The Buffalo Bore people suggest loading a hollow point in the chamber and the magazine filled with the lead alloy flat nose. The idea is that the first shot the attacker is most likely facing you, after that there will be arms in the way, the offender may be standing sideways, ducking, etc, all offering a more difficult path tho the ticklish spots.

 They also have a 95 grain FMJ flatpoint for those who cannot shoot lead and an 80 grain Barnes all copper hollow point, I have no idea what that one is for. It may just be prejudice on my part but I like some mass in my bullets, there are all kinds of ways to slow a bullet down but with enough mass it will always penetrate. I don't care what anyone says, I wouldn't bet my life on an expanding bullet that light. Again, though, that may simply be prejudice on my part. Since I don't carry a .380 I have no way to actually test this ammo.

 At any rate, these loads are among the best of the self defense ammo out there for this cartridge. The only equal is the stuff from Cor Bon and they don't seem to have the lead alloy flatpoint.

 Buffalo Bore also has some .38 and .357 ammo for those small framed wheelguns that are still so popular. The one that really caught my eye is their near copy of the handload I developed for my Ruger SP 101.  My handload is a Speer or Hornady lead semi-wadcutter hollow point in front of enough Bullseye, Unique or TiteGroup to make 1000 fps out of my three inch barrel. Well, Buffalo Bore does this with a lead semiwadcutter hollow point with a gas check on the base to reduce leading. They also have that same bullet at 850 fps for those shooting those ultralight revolvers that are easy to carry but kick like an angry mule.

 When I started carrying my little SP101 I did a lot of testing with the Speer and Hornady bullets at velocities from 800 fps on up to over 1100 fps. I found that once I passed 1000 fps recoil got obnoxious and slowed me way down for repeat shots. Oh, and leading became awful. At 1000 fps leading was there but if I cleaned the gun after a couple of cylinder fulls, I could live with it. And the home cast alloy bullets I used for practice worked fine.

 At any rate, anything above 800 fps gave me plenty of penetration in my test media. The higher velocities gave me about the same penetration, just a bigger diameter hole.

 If I carried any of these short .38s or .357s I'd look very hard at the 1000 fps load. The 850 fps load is about the same as the Winchester or Remington FBI load, the only difference is the gas check. I'm not sure that the convenience of the gas check is wrth the added cost, but then my little revolver shoots lead just fine. If I had an old, pitted bore that leaded badly, well I might feel different.

 I usually don't much like jacketed hollow points in the short barreled revolvers. Most loads won't reliably expand with the lower velocities until we reduce the bullet weight so much that penetration gets iffy. Expansion in jacketed hollowpoints has got more reliable since about the late '70s but there aren't many I would trust out of a short barreled .38.  One of these is the Hornady XTP. If your load hits 850 fps you will get reliable expansion from those. Another is the Speer Gold Dot. They have a little 135 grain Gold Dot with a humongus hollow nose, the copper jacket is electroplated on. Those bullets will not come apart.  Funny story, though. The gunwriter Ross Seyfried told of loading these bullets in a short barreled revolver and tying to use them for the coup de grace on a downed elk. The bullet hit the thick part of the skull, flattened out and really, really made that elk angry. He claimed it got downright exciting as no one had their rifle at the ready. Note to self: do not hunt elk with a short barreled .38. There is a world of difference between human bones and the thick part of an elk's skull though. If one wishes to carry jacketed hollow point in a short .38 it's really hard to beat the Speer 135 grain short barrel load.My Linda Lou prefers this load over the old FBI lead hollow point because it kicks less and there is sightly less report.

 Anyhow. Buffalo Bore has a lot of interesting loads. If, for some strange reason, I decided to carry one or two of my Colt Single Action Army clones for defense I would look long and hard at their full wadcutter anti-personnel round. Actually, there would be good reason to carry one of those revolvers if I were, say, out in the country, carrying openly. Anyhow a 225 grain full wadcutter at around 1000-1100 fps from a five and a half inch barrel down to around 850 from one of those two inch Taurus Titanium revolvers is nothing I'd volunteer to stand in front of. Come to think about it, I'm not sure about volunteering to shoot a .22 ounce .45 but then I'm not a tough guy like one sees at the gun shops. Heck, I don't even wear camouflage when in town.

 One thing I have noticed is how expensive this factory ammo is. Some "experts" say not to trust ammo and gun combinations until you've fired at least four hundred rounds with nary a bobble. That costs more than my first few cars. Put together. Today most defense ammo is sold in 20 round boxes. I contend that if your gun gets through at least two of those little boxes, starting from a clean gun and goes through both boxes with at least one full of each of your carry magazines, you should be good to go. You can go with the rest of your practice with plain vanilla or handloaded ammo. Of course if you have twelve carry magazines of 17 rounds each, that's a lot of ammo to prove your loads. Sorry.

 Some of the best news in ammunition is the low flash powders that have been developed. It wasn't long ago that shooting, say, a four inch .357 was like setting off a flash-bang grenade. The Buffalo Bore guys have a complete line of anti-personnel ammo with low flash powder. And much of it is low recoil-low report ammo, too. Of course, there's only so far one can go to reduce recoil.

These days most of the research into handgun defensive ammunition is geared toward the autoloaders, the .380, the Nine MM Para, the .40 S&W,  and even the good old .45 ACP.  Still, some of this research has bled over to the wheelgun rounds.

 Anyhow, if you need to have factory ammo in your defense guns. Buffalo Bore is a good place to start.

The Fighting Shotgun

 Much is said about fighting shotguns these days, though I'm not quite sure why. Contrary to popular belief shotguns are not the first choice for a home defense weapon. A shotgun works well in a panic room situation where a homeowner and family can fort up and wait for help to come. Most home defense situations aren't like that, though. A householder cannot stick a shotgun behind her back and see who is at the door, for instance, not without causing neighborhood talk.

 A shotgun does have it's uses but they're narrow. A shotgun works best between three and about forty yards. If the ranges are expected to be closer than seven yards a handgun works better, and past forty, a carbine or rifle. And at the ranges past about twenty-five yards an open choked shotgun will be missing the target with at least some of those buckshot. Even when well aimed. And remember, the shooter is responsible for every single pellet.

 The odd thing about buckshot is that a single buckshot pellet can be fatal while not a dependable stopper. And always remember that the only legal reason to fire on someone is to make them stop what they are doing, right now. And this is the fighting shotgun's sole reason. The multiple strike of several fairly substantial pellets has a much better chance of immediate incapacitation. And it does no good to the householder when the axe murderer dies three hours after hacking the grandchildren to death.

 A single buckshot doesn't have a whole lot of bohemous to it, it's about like being hit by a .22 LR from a rifle. Now it's true that either a single buckshot or a .22 can be instantly incapacitating, it requres surgical precision. Which is why no one depends on a .22 unless they have no choice. Still, nine 00 buck hitting at once gives nine nice chances, the 16 number one bucks are even better, which is why many police departments are switching to number one.

 The homeowner has another choice, number four buck. Police do not use number four much because the smaller pellets lose velocity and power fast. A cop will face possible targets at greater ranges than a citizen. At inside the house ranges a charge of 27 #4 buks will do everything a homeowner needs.

 Now the choice of shot depends on a homeowners needs and the local laws. Here in Resume Speed, Texas a homeowner is allowed to go outside to stop certain crimes, including even theft after dark. Now I wouldn't be the guy who wanted to run outside and blow away a teen siphoning gas but there are things around the place that I'd be perfectly willing to lay someone down and hold for the Sheriff's Dept. And I'd want my shotgun in hand to make sure the kid didn't have a Saturday Night Harrison in his pocket. So my shotgun has a Winchester low recoil 00 buck in one barrel and a #1 buck in the other.

 If I lived somewhere else I'd have all #4 in mine.

 Yes, I have a hammer double for my fighting shotgun. There are several reasons why, not least that where I live my shotgun is the last gun I'd choose.. My first choice for inside is one of the handguns. My first choice for outside is my .45 Colt carbine. With the terrain around the house I can hit anything I can see with that. The only reason I'd grab the shotgun is if I wanted to hold someone while making sure that (s)he couldn't hurt me. Two rounds is plenty for that. Of course I an lucky enough to have plenty of choices as to what I'd grab. Many, even most, folks do not have those choices. For those a five or more shot shotgun is best.

 Most people prefer a pump. Actually an autoloader works just as well and most autoloaders have the advantage of reduced recoil. Autoloaders have only one drawback and that is that they are somewhat um, choosy about the level of power in the shell. A pump does not know the difference between those new low recoil buckshot loads and the standard level ones. And most of the newer pumps can shoot a mix of two and three quarter inch shells and three inchers, some even three and a half. Although the hmeowner who chooses a three and a half inch buckshot shell has more shoulder strength than brains.

 This is not to say that an autolader can't be adjusted for whatever power level one chooses, it's just that to change that power level requires a feld stripping at the very least and a trip to a gunsmith at the most. A pump can shuck whatever will go in the chamber and feed through the action.

 Pay attention here: The myth that a criminal will pee his pants and surrender at the sound of a pump shotgun's slide being jacked back and forth is just that, a myth. Yes, a smart criminal would give up but if he's so damned smart, why isn't he at work or in school? Criminals are not the brightest of all the lights on God's Christmas tree. I'll say this again: if he is smart he won't be stealing your stuff. Criminals are mostly stupid. Others are on drugs and, no matter the IQ, drugs make for stupid decisions.

 If a criminal surrenders or runs away at the sound or at "I have a gun, stop or I'll shoot!", well that is the best case senario. Still, I am unwilling to bet my family on best case. Here is something important: Before keeping a loaded firearm around to ward off criminals each person must decide the circumstance in which (s)he will take a life. A gun is not a magic wand. I can wave my gun about and criminals will still steal. I've owned guns for most of fifty years now and the world is still full of criminals. There is only one thing I can be sure my guns will do and that is shoot. And they won't even do that unless I tell them to.

Antigunners love to tout the "fact" that a homeowner is more likely to be shot with her own gun. Well, that is simple, a homeowner without a gun is more likely to die by knife or choking or blunt force trauma... Yes, I may die because of my own gun. That will be because there are more bad guys than I have handy cartridges and the survivors grab the hot iron out of my hands and beat me to death with it. Or, the reality, there are more armed bad guys and they kill me while I'm standing around trying to give Linda Lou a chance to get to cover and get her own shootin' iron into action.

 It's time to mention something else. In addition to a gun lacking magical qualities, there is also no rule that says the good guys win all firefights. The US Military wins most firefights and I like to think that we are the good guys. Still we win because we mostly use massive imbalance of force. Same with police. Police win most firefights because if police know there will be shooting it ain't one bluesuit with one peashooter, it's a mass of guys with all kinds of guns and armor. Everyone who straps a patrol car to his backside knows that if the one on one firefight happens he's liable to be the one who ends up leaking blood all over. The bad guy always chooses the scenario!

 In addition to deciding, long before loading that firearm, what circumstance you can kill a human, you must decide for what you are willing to die. I am unwilling to kill to protect my car or lawn tractor. I am also unwilling to let a thief go so I am willing to step out with a gun and hold that thief for the Deputy working my sector. I am also unwilling to allow that thief to hurt me, my wife or my dogs. So I have a working knowledge of the law on the use of firearms to protect life and property. I know that in Resume Speed, Texas I am allowed to shoot to stop all kinds of crime at night, without so much as  a warning at night. I am allowed to hold those same criminals at gunpoint during the day and shoot if they threaten me or mine. And I know that the local DA is um, generous with the thought of threat. So I know I would rather not kill but will if I must. I know that I'd rather not die (even though I'm a married man) but I refuse to live in fear of petty crooks. These are my conditions. Someone so smart I don't remember who he was put it that "I shall live free or die trying."

 So, there is much to think about before loading that gun. Now, again, it is my opinion that one should never buy a fighting shotgun first, unless the person lives somewhere where handguns are verbotten. And if I lived in one of those places I'd move. There's a lot of empty ground here in Resume Speed. Not many jobs but you can't have everything.

 So, we've decided on a shotgun. Which one? Well, at the least, a double barrel, preferably a hammer double. Those can sit loaded forever, needing only to have the hammers eared back. The advantages of the double barrel are that, for comparable barrel length, they are around half a foot shorter. The disavantage? Only two shots. However, two shots of buckshot are still a lot of buckshot.

 Mpst folks will choose a magazine repeater. There are a few bolt actions and at least one Chinese company is selling a copy of the old 1887 Winchester lever action. About those bolt actions? Well, they're cheap. They are better than no gun at all. They are not my fifth choice for a fighting gun of any kind.

 That 1887 Winchester clone, well, it was an interesting creation back in the waning days of black powder. Some of the Cowboy Action shooters are having a lot of fun with them. Still, the stock design is suspect and the lever throw is very long making them slower to operate. And with the big loads they kick the snot out of the shooter.

 The pumps are the most common choice. Unlike the autoloaders they can take any sort of shell so a person can load up those cheap shells for practice, some of those rubber ball loads to chase stray dogs away from her flowerbeds and then any combination of buckshot and slugs .

 Most short barrel shotguns have cylinder bores, meaning no choke constriction. Most buckshot loads pattern better with Improved Cylinder chokes and slugs do well with that choke, too. If I were to choose, that would be the choke of my ideal shotgun.

 The barrel length should be somewhere between 18 1/2 inches and twenty-six inches. If my shotgun were to have most of it's intended use outdoors I'd go longer, indoors, shorter. The most practical length is twenty inches or so. Check local laws, some states requite a minimum of twenty inches, I believe. Federal law limits the barrel to eighteen inches or longer. I believe one should always go at least a half inch longer than the law requires, just for safety. I hate the idea of overly political cops and DAs but such do exist. And it can be very expensive winning a case where a barrel is barely legal. Federal and state law here both say eighteen inches, mine are a hair over twenty.My shotgun is legal everywhere. There may be restrictions out the wazoo on how I may transport it but it is legal.

 If my shotgun would only be used in a panic room or, say forted up in the master bedroom, the longer barrel would be best, every added inch of barrel makes the concussion of the shot a bit more bearable. And here is a secret: Firing even one round of the really big loads indoors from a short barreled gun will damage your hearing. There are more than one reason why the police haven't gone over to the three and a half inch shells firing 18 #00 buck per shot. The first three reasons is that they'll kick the shooter into the next Zip Code, they're overkill and after only a few shots the department will be buying a lot of expensive hearing aids.

 The person buying the fighting shotgun should be very chary of all those tacticool items the unaware like to hang on their shotguns. The very first item to avoid is the extended magazine.  You buy the pump shotgun and take off the magazine cap and lose that stupid little wooden thing that limits the capacity to three round, total, two in the mag and one in the chamber. That's the federal limit for waterfowl. The fighting shotgun ain't for ducks. So, then you put the cap back on and your magazine capacity is five or six.

 If you need more than that you ain't in a gunfight, you're either in a war or you've graduated to murder. Many extended magazines have really iffy springs and you end up with a repeating shotgun that won't repeat. And some shotshells start to lose their crimps just a little with repeated firing and the shot buffer (those itty-bitty plastic granules) start to leak out. Sometimes even the shot. Again, this can give you a repeating shotgun that won't repeat.So, stay away from extended mags. The last reason is that shotgun ammo is heavy. A pump shotgun is already heavy enough for steady holding. That extra half pound of extended magazine and extra shells won't help the holding, only marginally help with recoil and will slow the shotgun down on finding or following a moving target.

 Another thing to avoid are the lights on a shotgun. Really, it's okay to have such a light, just never turn it on. Consider where that light is, about two inches below the muzzle of the shotgun. Now, please, imagine putting the shotgun to your shoulder and your cheekweld on the stock, your eye right behind the sight.. Now, please, imagine the bad guy pegging his shot around three or four inches right above that light. No amount of Visene will remove the redness from that eye.

 A tacticool item to think long and hard before applying is that ghost ring rear sight and high visibility front sight. Now if my fighting shotgun were to be used with slugs at longer ranges, say fifty yards or more, I'd put that ghost ring on. Thing is, these days I'm just an ordinary homeowner and if I were to shoot someone that far away from me, well, I'd be answering a lot of questions and I'd better have a slew of bullet holes in my house or I'd be leaving Resume Speed and my new address would have my name, a long number and then, Huntsville, TX. And if I did have a valid reason for shootig that far I'd have my thiirteen round .45 Colt that, with the right ammo can put a 250 grain jacketed hollow Point out the muzzle at durned near two thousand feet per second and shoot a two inch hundred yard groupl

 In the real world that tacticool ghost ring sight is just about a half second slower to use than the plain front bead. This is at normal, inside the house ranges. Now, here on Earth the only thing we might think about is to put a bigger front bead on, either gold colored or white.

 Otherwise the only thing your fighting shotgun needs is a trip to the gunsmith to have the stock cut down so that the smallest person authorised to shoot it has a perfect fit, complete with a good, real good recoil pad. See, you can afford this because you passed on paying for all that tacticool stuff.

 The reason the stock should fit the smallest, meaning shortest pesron is that a taller person can adjust to a too-short stock easier than a short person can adjust to a too-long stock. And the best recoil pad is not too much. You only have to pay for a recoil pad once. A cheap pad and you'll pay every time you pull the trigger.

 Now if you are the "average male" the factory stock should fit you fine. If you're much taller than about five ten the stock needs to be somewhat longer. Do not cry. One of those slip on recoil pads will add around an inch to the stock. That's good to about six four. Much bigger than six four, you don't need a gun, throw furniture.

 If you are much shorter than about five eight, a shorter stock should be in your future. Best to call the local trap shooting club and find out who does the shotgun stock work around your area. Assuming that you aren't in your early to mid teens you are probably done getting taller. Spend the extra money here on someone who is a professional. Make sure the gunsmith understands that this is not going to be a wingshooting or trap shooting gun. There are some subtle differences between the ideal drop at heel and drop at comb (don't worry, any gunsmith worthy of the title understands these terms) of a wingshooting and a fighting shotgun.

 Now the recoil pad. There are really only two to look at, the Limbsaver and the Pachmeyer Decelerator. They are about equal. Have the 'smith put it on and have the stock cut to fit, or lengthened to fit. Spacers are cheap and they come a quarter inch each so you can have a stock perfect for one.

 Now I am around a half foot taller than my beloved who is plumb deadly with her little two inch LadySmith .38. She has absolutely no desire to ever shoot my shotgun. So, fine, my shotgun fits me. If she wanted to shoot my shotgun the stock would have to shrink by about two and a quarter inch and then a one inch pad stuck on. This would make the stock too short for me but the only real problem would be with my big ol' honker, The average shooter puts his dominate thumb over the wrist (that small part just behind the tigger) of the stock. A too short stock moves the face up toward the wrist of the stock. With the thumb over the wrist the recoil jabs the thumb and thumbnail wright into the nose, instant bloody nose.

 Here is the test and the solution: When firing a new to you shotgun or centerfire rifle for the first time, wrap your thumb up real good with a bandana, hankerchief or shop towel and hold the hootin' iron normally. Fire a shot or two of normal recoiling loads. If the well-wrapped thumb stays away from your nose, you're golden. If not, use the method that post WW1 military shooters used with the M1903 Springfield .30-06. When that rifle was designed most of the men who designed, built and approved that rifle were men of the Civil War and Indian War generation.

 Sometime between around 1865 and 1920 there was a big increase in average height. Better diet, water and air had much to do with it. Not to mention the folks who came from, say Scandanavia breeding with folks from, say Italy. My older sister married a man whose parents were pure Japanese, I can't remember offhand if they were first or second generation americans. He spent part of his boyhood in those relocation camps. At any rate, just because of the American diet he is about four or six inches taller than his parents.

 I have no particular interest in race or ethnic groups here, it's just a fact that the average grew taller and heavier over the generations. Anyhow, here is the trick. Instead of folding the thumb over the wrist of the stock, keep that thumb parallel with the barrel. That way the thumb is out of the way and it won't ever bust you in the beezer. A cool little historical note: in WW2 the newer guys who wanted to look saltier than they really were fired their M1s like the old vets fired the Springfields, with their thumbs lined up with the barrel.

 Anyhow, that's all a fighting shotgun needs. If your shotgun is a cylinder bore the only thing besides the (possible) stock work, the bigger gold or ivory bead and the good recoil pad is to have a gunsmith add a screw in choke tube. That's another thing that is fairly cheap. With a screw in choke tube you can set your shotgun up with the Improved Cylinder choke which is what factories have historically regulated their buckshot loads with. Slugs do pretty well with that choke, too. although the factories use full choke with those.

 With the Cylinder bore the spread of the shot charge is somewhat less than an inch per yard with the cheap, unbuffered loads. Those cheapest buckshot loads will have a pattern about tenty inches in diameter at twenty five yards.Picture a circle that big with random scattered holes, all around the aiming point.. Now with buffered loads that circle is smaller with those holes closer together. The top loads are the ones with nickel or copper plated shot and  the very best have the Federal Flight Control Wads or the Winchester #1 buck loads keep the best patterns. Of course if the shotgun stays in the house the load that patterns best down the longest hall is the one you want.

 The single biggest advantage of the screw in choke tubes is that with them you can use your shotgun for more than just in case. Put that silly little wood dowel back in and you have a three shot legal hunting gun. Wingshooting at ducks or upland game is not the same as practicing in a funhouse or a Hogan's Alley but any shooting is better than no shooting. And while a twenty inch fighting shotgun isn't perfect for trap it ain't too bad for skeet. and, again, any shooting is better than no shooting.

 Mossberg has several shotguns good for the job. So does Winchester. The Remington 870 is near legendary in the field. Many of these guns have interchangable barrels so one can go from a fighting shotgun to a goose hunter in a matter of minutes. If, of course you're mad at any geese. The wonderful old Ithaca Mod 37 still rides in a whole lot of police cruisers.

 Pretty much anyone who makes shotguns makes a model that would do well as a fighting shotgun. If I was starting all over I'd look long and hard at the shortbarreled Chinese copy of the Winchester 97. It had everything I'd want, except the interchangable choke tubes and they are fairly cheap. There is simply no better safety than an external hammer. Five rounds in the magazine. And a list price new of around three hundred bucks.

 You can still find some pretty good original models but then, someone who can sort out the good from the bad in guns ranging from sixty years old to a hundred and fourteen years old will not be much interested in my ramblings.

 Now I have been focussed on the 12 gauge shotguns, they are simply the most common.The gun buyers who buy used can find some fairly nifty 16 bore guns, ammo is somewhat more limited but there is enough to make for a viable fighter. The smaller statured might also look to the 20 gauge. Their buckshot loads of number three buck or the three inch loads of number 2 are not anything I would like to get in front of and wiggle my butt.

 Twenty gauge is as small as I'd go. There are simply no suitable loads in 28 gauge and a .410 is back to well, it's a gun, better than no gun at all but a good solid .38 would beat it for a fighting gun.

 That's about all I know about the fighting shotgun. Within it's very specific limits there is simply no gun that hits harder. A charge of nine to twenty-seven buckshot hitting all at once is simply the most effective stopper of all. The downside? The ammo is heavy. At close range the shot charge has to be aimed like a rifle, it's very easy to miss with a shot charge only a few inches in diameter. The recoil is enough that it takes a bit of time to fire the next shot. A smart criminal will take his chances with the judge when faced with a shotgun but, remember, criminals ain't smart. And the real smart criminals aren't the ones in your house, they're criminals like the Democrat donor George Soros and the Democrat Donor Bernie Madoff.

 Still, the main reason to have a fighting shotgun is the Cowboy Action or the three gun games. I shoot, or rather, used to shoot, before Linda Lou shattered her ankle, Cowboy Action. I've had the lever action carbine in .357 for a few decades now, although it lives with our #2 boy. Seein' as how I have that lever action Model 92 .45 Colt clone I don't mind too much, as long as he doesn't let it rust away.

Three gun is the one for the shooter with an autoloader pistol and a pump shotgun, any old fast firing rifle would do although the top scorers shoot some pretty fancy iron.

 I chose Cowboy Action because of my interest in 18th and 19th Centuries. While the competition isn't perfect practice for a gunfight, any shooting is better than no shooting. and I put in enough time where shooting was all about something grim and ugly. Three gun isn't perfect practice for a gunfight, either. It's more perfect practice for the would be super trooper. Again, though, any shooting is better than no shooting and either game is enough to get a lot better than 99.9% of all the bad guys. And either game, somebody with about half of the stuff he or she needs can show up at a match and will proably be able to shoot the whole thing with his or her own stuff plus a choice of several different irons of the kid (s)he lacks.The best thing about the shooting games is that shooters are honest and generous. Shooters leave multiple thousands of dollars worth of gear at matches where they themselves cannot see it. And they will gladly loan very expensive guns out to near complete strangers.

 I have been lucky enough to shoot original, factory engraved Colt Single Actions, original 1876  Winchesters, shotguns costing over fifteen thousand dollars, actual Sharps Buffalo guns, fine English double rifles and shotguns that cost more than our car when new. Meanwhile I show up with three Italian clones of the Colt Peacemaker, a Chinese clone of the 1899 double shotgun and a Brazilian clone of the 92 Winchester. Go to any of the shooting sports with a dose of humility, a desire to learn and a willingness to share in the work. You'll be given plenty of chances to try the stuff and to buy what you need. The members can be divided between the competitors and the shooters. Most of the shooters are there because the shooting is a lot more fun than the same old punching little holes in paper. The competitors just wanna WIN! That's kind of neat for the shooters.  The competitors are always selling something perfectly good to buy something just a little bit better. And you know how the value of a new car drops just from driving it off the lot? Guns are about as bad. You will save a ton of money by lining up a few matches. Unless you catch the competitor bug. Then kiss your money goodbye.

Will We See London. USA?

I strongly suspect we will see a form of London, USA. The flash mob robberies and beatings will continue and sooner or later some intended victim will be armed. Emptying his or her gun into these idiots will cause more unrest.

Then we will see things like we saw in the LA Rodney King riots, Korean shop owners forting up to keep the idiots at bay.

I, of course, don't hardly have to worry about it, it ain't like the denizens of Lake Tawakoni are going to riot, we're all armed. Plus my neighbors don't have any more than I do, what would be the point?

Actually, most folks will not have to worry much about any unrest. If the "youths" in Chicago start getting too out of hand, most folks will stay out of Chicago. Eventually, the responsible folks will have all moved away and those feral "youths" will get mighty hungry. Meanwhile the suburbs will be forted up. This, of course, will be called raaaaacism. No one in government or the media will notice the middle class minority people helping to man the "barricades".

A lot of folks are buying guns. A lot of folks are going to some of those shooting schools. And a lot of folks are wondering which of the twelve gazillion shooting schools to attend. Meanwhile the new people buying shootin' irons are often buying the wrong kind of weapon. Everyone and their mother with machine shop capabilities are making clones of the AR15. Folks, if you want something to defend your home, this is the wrong gun. The geniuses in the Defense Dept. (notice we have not really won a war since we got rid of the War Dept.?) decided that it's far better to wound an enemy than to kill him. Something about the hospitalization taking more resources. Well, wounding a bad guy is fine, as long as the wound completely paralyzes him. Otherwise he can still kill you.

Oddly, most areas where ordinary folks are most vulnerable to unreast, it's hardest to get and keep arms. So, like in California, you cannot buy an AR15 clone anyway, without a ten round maximum capacity, etc, etc. So a lot of folks tout pump shotguns for home defense. Sorry, wrong again. The pump shotgun is too big to handle in the house. I know we tell civilians to fort up the whole family in one room, defend that room and wait for the local police. That is a great idea except we hear a noise? Is it the dog? Is it one of the kids going to pee? Is it your daughter's no good boyfriend sneaking over, again? Sure, call 911 every time you hear a noise. Umm, no. What works is to grab your good bright flashlight, tuck your handgun just behind your back, in your strong hand, and check it out.

You do not want a rifle or shotgun then, how do you handle a two handed gun and light switches, kids and dogs all at once? So, the first thing you need is a good flashlight and then a handgun. If you don't get a good flashlight, don't bother with a gun.

What gun? I will go against common wisdom here. Unless you shoot for sport I say choose a revolver. Autoloaders have advantages for police and military. Revolvers have other advantages. Put a loaded revolver in your bedside table and thirty years later it will still fire those corroded-green shells. An auto? Probably not. Naturally I'd like you to practice a lot but most folks won't. Truth is, skill doesn't matter all that much. If a citizen gets into a gunfight it's going to be really close. What really counts is willingness. Gunfights happen within the width of a car or the length of a car. The width of a room, the length of a room. Once a citizen learns to hit a target at the range of the biggest room in her house, she's good enough.

Now for a house gun I say there are only a few choices left, the S&W Military and Police K frame and other revolvers of that size are the most common. They come in .38 Special and .357 Mag. Either one is fine. Load it with Winchester Plus P lead semiwadcutter hollow points or that new Speer Gold Dot 135 grain load. Don't bother with flashlights or lasers on the gun, your handheld flashlight will do. Don't waste money on stuff like that, instead invest in practice ammo. When you can hit one of those cheap paper plates every shot at the length of your biggest room, well you're good enough.

Forget all that horsecrap about running around, crawling through pipes, kickin' in doors that some of these schools teach. Half of them give drills that would get you killed if you wore Kevlar to work, all of them teach stuff you and I will never do. I'm too old and fat to be takin' down crack houses or busting MS13 clubhouses. My gun is to protect my family, my life and my home.

There are a couple of other choices in house guns. Those with small hands might well decide to choose one of the little five shooters like the S&W Chief's Special, the Ruger SP101 or one of the Brazilian copies of that S&W. These are also the best guns for carrying. There are lots of autoloaders but, really, those are for soldiers and cops. The simple reality is that if a civilian needs more than five shots he's so outnumbered that all he's doing is taking an escort to Hell with him.

There is another cartridge out, that new Federal .327 Magnum. That little pocket rocket loads six rounds in the same Ruger SP101 that I carry, mine only holds five .357s. It's six to one, half dozen of the other for carry. Ain't nobody gonna laugh if either cartridge hits center mass.

Those are the house guns, or store guns, for that matter. Now there is one more kind of gun I'd like to talk about. The long gun, a rifle or shotgunfor the urban dweller who fears what we saw in England, or for that matter, Detroit in '67. During the Rodney King riots we saw a lot of buildings and businesses burned. We also saw rioters turning away from those Korean-owned stores where the men and women were standing by with rifles and shotguns. Any kind of repeating shotgun will keep bad guys out of Molotov Cocktail range, so will just about any repeating rifle.

I would not bother with an AR 15 clone. The 5.56 will kill, and it will wound. Thing is, if the bullet does not hit something immediate like the heart, spine or brain the bad guy can still do a lot of damage before he finally bleeds out. The average mule deer is about the same size and weight as a full grown man and there is almost no one who says "let's hunt mule deer with our .223s!"

The 12 guage shotgun has a lot going for it at close range. Even better is a little pistol caliber carbine. A .357 or .44 Mag, a .45 Colt lever action holds at least nine rounds and they are all deadly. out to ranges where if I shot anyone I'd go to prison. Put some men and women up on the roof with those and the bad guys would never live to throw a Molotov Cocktail at your business or home.

I could be wrong. When the Democrats run out of other people's money the "youths" might just buckle down and get jobs and I could be John Holmes long lost identical twin. Everyone is buying commodities to weather the recession. Some bought gold. I bought lead.

Bad Investment In Pima County Law Enforcement

Taxpayers pay a heck of a lot of money for law enforcement and, contrary to what many think, they usually get a fairly good deal. The bluesuits, deputies and state guys are head and shoulders above most of the rest of the world.

Sometimes, though, we get a bad return on our investment. We see a case in Tuscon, Arizona where it looks like the Sheriff's Department has just thrown away all the money that was supposed to train their SWAT Teams. Now Sheriff Dupnik, yeah, THAT Sheriff Dupnik, has shut down the information pretty well, unlike with Loughner awhile back, but we have another mass shooting. Only this time one man was killed, a man who served two tours in the sandbox for us. Seems this young father was sleeping when his wife woke him because she heard strange noises and saw men through the windows where they shouldn't have been.

Jose Guerena, former Corporal, United States Marine Corps did what a trained man would do, got his rifle, the civilian version of the M-16, the famous old AR-15 and told his wife to hide in the closet with their four year old son.

Seventy-one shots later Guerena lay dying with his rifle still on safe, unfired. As he lay dying the Sheriff's Dept would not allow an ambulance because of "the possibility of a barricaded suspect".

The whole idea of these Special Weapons and Tactics teams is that some LEOs in an organization get extra training. One of the most important, indeed one of the first parts of weapons training is fire discipline.

Jose Guerena may or may not have had drugs in his house. He wouldn't have been the first guy to go for the easy money, although considering that he was sleeping after working the graveyard shift at a Pima County mine I would need a lot of convincing. Nor would he be the first to ever self medicate for the pain brought by serving an only somewhat grateful nation. If there were any drugs in that house. We do not know.

What we do know is that Jose Guerena fired no rounds at Law Enforcement Officers. Law Enforcement Officers fired seventy-one rounds. At the time, Guerena had been convicted of no crimes. He still has not. He is still dead.

Why did those LEOs shoot? I read on Blackfive's site that one of the SWAT Team guys may have had a negligent discharge, in other words, some damned fool running around with his finger on the trigger. And then all fire discipline disappeared. Ohmygod! He's got a GUN! I heard a SHOT!!! BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!!!!! In other words, exactly what we pay big money to train these meatheads not to do.

It could even be worse than that, one of these LEOs could have seen Guerena and his rifle and just started shooting and then fire discipline went away and everyone else got into the act. The shame is we'll never know. The Blue Wall and the Khaki Curtain will see to it that the people who pay the bills will only get the properly massaged version of the troof.

I do not know Pima County as well as I do Maricopa County, our oldest lives in Phoenix. I do know that the whole state has pockets where an LEOs seeing a homeowner with a gun in his (or her) hands when hearing a noise. It's one of those things, there is a drill for it. There's no reason for loud noises just because an LEO sees a gun, even while serving a warrant.

Somebody screwed the pooch here. A husband and father, a veteran and a miner is dead. He died with the safety on. He didn't fire a shot. We sure deserve some answers. And the people in charge of the Pima County Sheriff's Department firearms training should lose their jobs. The people in that SWAT TEAM need to be reassigned to school crossing guard duty except that that wouldn't be fair to the children. Seventy-one rounds. News article says sixty hits. Folks, that is not trained officers work. That's panicky jerks with guns.

This is why I think it was a major mistake to move from revolvers to semiautos for police work. Yes, there might have been two times in history that more shots on tap might have saved the day for the good guys. But think of all the other times a bunch of half-trained clowns have emptied the magazine into a house with a mother and child inside. Chalk up one more.

Happy Birthday(s)

It was a bit over a hundred years ago when the Moro tribesmen revolted against the American troops occupying the Philippine Islands, taken from Spain after the Spanish American War of 1898. The fighting was nasty. The Moros would bind themselves up with wire so tight it deadened the pain nerves and charged from the jungle swinging those sharp Bolo swords so suddenly that the long bolt action rifles the troops carried were hampered. Worse, the Army had switched from the famous old Single Action Army revolver to a newer, double action revolver, unfortunately they went to a different cartridge, the miserable .38 Long Colt, a ctg. that is rotting away in well deserved obsolescence.

The geniuses that run the military have always gone from low ranking to high ranking over years and decades of service. By the time they make General they have long forgotten what it's like to lead a platoon through a close quarters fight. They start to think strategically and get odd ideads like how it takes four men out of the fight to care for a wounded man and how it takes more of an enemy's resources to care for a wounded man than it does to bury a dead man. That is fine, of course, when you are fighting a European draftee who doesn't care much who wins, he's still gonna be a conscript. Not so the Moros (who our sneaky Pete types in the Army's Special Forces and the Navy's SEAL Teams were still trying to stamp out, last I heard), who didn't stop trying to kill the infidels until they were down for the count.

The Army was in a quandry. The old Colt thumb busters were mostly gone, either flat wore out or sold for surplus, they bought a load of double action revolvers in .45 Colt with that newfangled smokeless powder giving the same ballistics as the old Cavalry load of a 230 grain bullet over 28-30 grains of Black. This was the load that defeated the Sioux and the Apache and it defeated the Moros, too. Still, the Generals weren't happy.

A brilliant American from Utah went to work, John Browning. By 1905 he had designed a semiautomatic handgun in .45 caliber and sent it up for testing. The emergency mostly over due to the Moros running low on young men willing to die fighting, the military took it's time and demanded some changes. They wanted another safety, a grip safety so the pistol could only be fired while being help properly and they wanted a bit more bullet weight, Browning had used 200 grains instead of 230, the Army wanted that 30 grains back. The cartridge was, of course, a lot shorter because smokeless powder is so much denser for the same power. The cartridge was also rimless for use in the pistol's stack magazine. As a matter of fact the base of John Browning's pistol is the same size as the military rifle of the day, the .30-06. A minor detail to the civilian, that one little detail saved thousands of dollars in tooling (in 1911 dollars) for the manufacture of cartridges in the arsenals, even more in the big build up for The War To End All Wars.

So the Model 1911 is 100 years old today. The old girl did her work in WW1. the Banana Wars, WW2, Korea and Viet Nam before the geniuses that ran the military retired her in the mid 1980s. Funny, though, the troops that actually use handguns to stay alive, the Special Ops people, all shoot handguns firing John Browning's .45ACP. Funny, just about everyone who can still carries the .45.

Today everybody and their mother in law makes a 1911. Even the Chinese make them, heck, even Smith and Wesson. I have always been a revolver man, I learned to shoot on a revolver and the big square grip in the 1911 tends to twist in my hand when shooting fast, one handed. I know it's been fashionable to shoot two handed for decades but sometimes that off hand might be busy. Still, if I were going to war again, I'd choose a 1911. In war if you need a handgun it's up close. In war if you need a handgun the chances are it will be muddy or dusty or sandy. Heck, in the Nam I saw trucks splashing mud and raising dust at the same time.

Anyhow, happy birthday, old girl. I suspect that gunnies will still carry you up untll they invent the ray gun.

In a slightly less momentous birthday I turned 64 yesterday. My birthday present was another ache.

The .308 Winchester, All The Cartridge (Case) You'll Need

In the years leading up to WW2 the Army wanted a new cartridge but with war fast coming, they stuck with the .30-06. Mainly because of the vast stock of cartridges and the fact that the M-1 rifle and the various .30 caliber machine guns were proven designs. Still, the fellers in the Ordnance Department were looking. The main reason was that the powder technology had improved between 1906 and the 1940s. This meant that they could use a more modern powder and get the same ballistics of the .30-06 in a smaller case.

A smaller case is a Big Deal to the Army. This means that there will be less cartridge brass used. It means that the loaded round will be smaller and lighter, and it means that the rifles and machine guns can be smaller. It also means that there will be a little less recoil.

Before anyone even thought of the .308, Savage brought out the .300 Savage, doing more or less the same thing, a smaller round giving about the same velocity as the original .30-06. This is a 150 grain bullet at around 2700 feet per second. This is a magic number for a rifle bullet. A spitzer (pointed) bullet at about that speed will hit about as far as a skilled marksman can aim. And a spitzer bullet with enough weight, say the 150 .30 caliber or the 154 8mm of the Germans can do everything an infantryman needs to do with a rifle. It can kill a man or a truck as far as the soldier can shoot. After than, call in the artillery.

So, by WW2 the .30-06 case had about a half inch or more of empty space that drove the Ordnance boys mad. Civilian hunters did not mind, the improvements in powder gave them more velocity. It was only fairly recently that civilian hunters learned that velocities above 2700 fps are wasted in about 99% of hunting situations, something the military learned back in 1906. This would be a separate issue but, offhand I'll just say that very high velocity is a special purpose affair, not a general hunting round.

Anyhow, the war wasn't over before the military started looking for a new cartridge. They wanted to keep the .30 caliber, after all, they had lots and lots of machinery to make .30 caliber barrels. They wanted the magic 2700 fps with a 150 grain bullet. I only know one name of the ordnance types involved with developing this round, Phil Sharpe. Philip Burdette Sharpe was one of the lions of the prewar handloading movement, writing one of the seminal books of smokeless powder reloading. This was A Complete Guide To Handloading, first published in 1937. As an aside, it's fun to read those old books, if for no other reason to see how folks took various things that today give the safety "experts" the vapors.

At any rate, somehow a bunch of Phil Shape's old notebooks came to the folks at Handloader Magazine, part of those notebooks was a long study of an obscure French Cartridge, the 7.5 mm. The .308 is very close to that cartridge case. Anyhow the .308, also known as the 7.62mm NATO is a pretty cool little round. It can easily beat the original 150gr. at 2700fps of the first .30-06. As a matter of fact several powders will beat 2700fps with a 175 gr. out of a 24 inch barrel.

Most .308s will not handle those long 220 grain round nose soft points, the one in twelve twist rates of the barrels will simply not stabilize them This is not a big deal, though. A lot of the newer, lighter bonded or all copper Barnes bullets will penetrate just as deeply. I would be very surprised if something like the 180 grain Hornady Interbond or that new Speer Deep Curl didn't do the job as well as, say, the old Remington 220 grain round nosed soft point out of the .30-06. Powder and bullet technology have advanced that far.

An open country hunter would be very well served with the Barnes 140 grain XBT slug, there are several loads that will give a muzzle velocity of over 2900 fps. Someone please explain to me exactly why I would need one of those real loud, real heavy Magnum rifles again. A hunter loaded with that bullet, at that velocity would have all the ooomph! needed to kill any deer, speed goat, or caribou way out past where 98% of all hunters should ever take a shot at unwounded game.

Something bigger out there? A 180 grain Norler Partition, Hornady Interbond, Swift A-Frame or Speer Deep Curl and you are up for Elk out to at least 250 yards. Moose? A little closer, although that's no problem, the only way to see a Moose at more than 250 yards is across a lake, Moose are not exactly plains animals.

With the exception of the Great Bears of North America, there is nothing but the Bison that I would hesitate to go after with the .308. To tell the truth, with a premium bullet, the Bison would fall but it just wouldn't be right. A Bison would deserve a Sharps or a Remington Rolling Block.

Idle Thoughts Of An Almost Retired Gunny.

I am retired from hunting, these days. After my stroke it just wouldn't be fair to the game. The only sort of competitive shooting I do anymore is Cowboy Action and I haven't done that since Linda Lou broke her leg. It's not that i don't want to go to a shoot, it's that if I had the money for gas and range fees, I'd go visit Linda Lou in the hospital. And when she was trying to recover at home, the money went to medical stuff that the insurance didn't cover like bandages.

Still, I keep up with the literature and I read the shooting websites. Then I sit around and wonder what world most gunwriters inhabit. I understand that the gun companies come out with new cartridges, not to fill any particular need, but so they can sell more guns. Take, for instance, the new super short magnums. The ponly thing any of them do is give the ballistics of an older round, in a differently shaped case. a shape of case that makes for a rifle with feeding problems, which is why many, if not most, custom riflemakers won't try to build them.

Meanwhile, in spite of all this "progress" in cartridges and rifles, a couple of years back they did a study. The rifle cartridge that had the most one shot kills on deer was the old .300 Savage. Rifles with less oomph would fail with hits from bad angles, rifles and loads more powerful kicked more, making precise shots more difficult.

The .300 Savage approached the original military load of the 150 grain .30-06 in a cartridge short enough to fit that famous old Savage 99 lever action. Like the .308, .260 Remington and the 7mm-08 it was powerful enough for anything but the big bears. Yet nobody much cares about these rounds, wanting POWER! And then they wonder why they have a splitting headache after a practice session.

Another idle thought. Why is it that people who want to go hunting spend all their practice sessions shooting off those big benches, with their rifles snugged into sandbags? How, persactly, does one carry that bench and sandbags out into the woods? Hunting season is almost here. If I were to walk behind the firing line at a busy range I might, might see one guy between the benches, in the sitting or kneeling positions, shooting. And the guys wonder why their freezers are full of storebought beef instead of venison.

I have a couple of acquaintances who are professional hunting guides and outfitters. They always cringe when a client shows up with a new looking magnum rifles. They know that the most recoil the average hunter can handle, and still shoot accurately, is the .30-06. And. really, with rifles getting lighter and lighter, that trend is not toward more powerful rifles. In my day, a normal bolt action rifle weighed 'purt near ten pounds with scope, sling and a magazine full of .30-06 rounds, which was four or five. Today a lot of rifles are a full two pounds lighter, some closer to four pounds. The lighter the rifle, the more the same round kicks, the more recoil, the quicker comes the flinch.

Speaking of rifle weight with sling, how many shooters today can get into a loop sling, quickly? How many can get into a loop sling at all? The loop sling is the single most important aid to accuracy there is in the field. A hunter who is used to shooting from sitting or kneeling with a loop sling is almost as accurate as the guy with his rifle snugged into sandbags on that big concrete bench at rifle ranges. And yet if a modern bolt action wears a sling at all it's one of those "Cobra" style things that are good only for carrying the weapon. So, as rifles get lighter, the slings get wider, modern shoulders must really be tender.

Still another idle thought. The new conventional wisdom is that a person needs a semiautomatic pistol with enough ammo in the magazine to fight the Battle of the Bulge, without reloading, plus have another magazine or two in reserve, all for civilian self defense. Seems that no one is rude enough to ask exactly what happens in a gunfight if you miss the first five or six shots that a revolver carries with that fancy semiauto. Let me be that rude guy. Seeing as how the only real reason for shooting at someone is that that someone poses a deadly threat, you can't solve it in five or six rounds, You. Are. Dead. Worse, those you were trying to defend are now at the tender mercy of the bad guy(s).

Or, what would happen to the civilian who fires the whole ten to fifteen rounds into a bad guy like they think they're in a big city police force. Can you spell prison term?

I have my own quarrel with outfitting city bluesuits with high capacity handguns, too many are not trained well enough to avoid spraying bullets all over the neighborhood, mostly missing but an unfortunate number of rounds going into the bad guy, who has not been convicted of anything, long after he's down. Big cities lack the funds, anymore, to do more than a cursory amount of training. So, when these kids in blue see a perceived threat, the first thing they do is forget about the front sight. The next thing is to start pulling the trigger until they hear a bunch of "clicks" instead of bangs. Somehow, the knowledge of only six shots beminds people to aim.

What the gunwriters and internet gurus have forgotten is that the semiauto pistol shooter needs a lot more training and constant practice than does the owner of a revolver. A revolver also can stand neglect a lot better than that auto. The military style semiauto can take abuse better than the revolver, the revolver, neglect. I have seen the old Colt 1911 dropped into sand, shaken off and fired, without missing a beat. Whereas a revolver can sit, loaded for years, until the brass shell casings have turned green, and those green shells still fired. A semi needs to be maintained.