US Presidential Election 2008 - Candidates stances on gun control

I've been trying to document various public statements that all the current candidates have made regarding gun control or the 2nd Amendment. The videos are posted at our Politics 2008 page and are sorted alphabetically by candidate.

Here's a sample:

Hollowpoints are better man stoppers?

Well this short little video from FirstScience.tv certainly wants to say that hollowpoints have "better stopping power" than round nose bullets...based on the damage to a couple of milk jugs. I feel a heck of a lot better about the work we've been doing after watching this video (though I could learn something from them on video editing). While I'm not debating the obvious merits of hollowpoints, I don't know that you can definitively say they have more stopping power.

A) It really depends on the type of shooting you are doing. As an antipersonnel round, perhaps they're better, but I've heard that they are illegal in some parts of the US. As a hunting round, I'm not certain that this is the case. A lot has been written about "Keith" bullets (essentially semi-wadcutter lead bullets) and the power those type of bullets posses (read up on them).

B) The caliber and type of gun would seem to matter much more than the bullet (assuming you hit what you're aiming at in the first place), when you weigh stopping power. And no, I'm not getting into a 1911 vs 9mm debate, but rather look at the muzzle velocity of a .357 Mag handgun vs a .357 Mag rifle (any number of lever runs are available in this caliber). Same round, same bullet, vastly different muzzle velocities because they're vastly different firearms.

For example, a number of states list their game regulations as some form of "must have 1,000 ft lbs of energy at 100 yards" for a firearm to be able to be used on big game. With a .357 rifle with a 16" barrel, at least one of the factory Buffalo Bore rounds will produce that energy. The muzzle velocity is listed as near 1800 ft lbs (in a 16" barrel) vs similar (if less "heavy") product from Remington producing 1295 ft lbs (in a 4" barrel). At 100 yards, you'll see significant fall off from a .357 Mag and you really need that high starting muzzle velocity to have a chance at making the game regulation as stated above. So you can certainly argue that it's barrel length, along with the load that determines stopping power in this case.

These are the things that you need to consider when you try to make an "apples to apples" comparison: caliber, load (aka powder), bullet type, bullet weight, and barrel length.

Do you shoot better than a NYC police officer?

The New York Times released an article today discussing a NYC shooting statistics. The number of times shots were fired, along with the number of hits (See the image below)


Basically as the distance between the officer increases, the chance of success decreases (imagine that), and total number of shots also decrease (also expected). There's a fair bit of back in forth in the two page article talking about why officers shouldn't use lethal force, or when they do shoot their firearm the result tends to be lethel, but I'm uncertain why they have such a problem with the success rates.

They're not talking about IPSC comptetion results; they're talking about real world results. The real world isn't a John Wayne movie (though I may enjoy those as much as everyone). You can't "throw" your pistol forward and hit every time. Anyone that shoots regularly knows this, and can attest to this at the gun range. Ok, so let's find someone who might know what they're talking about; look at what the NRA Handgun Qualification says about their Marksman rating (the third level up from beginner):

Warm-Up Event
Position: Standing, two hands.
Distance: 15 feet.
Target: Paper plates/discs 9" diameter.
Time: No restrictions.
Rating requirements: Acquire 10 plates with 10 shots in each plate. All shots must be inside a 1½" margin from the edge of the plate. The 10 plates do not have to be fired in succession or on the same day.

That's 100% success rate...with no hurry on when you shot. Ok, not quite what the police are likely to encounter. How about the NRA's Sharpshooter classification (level 5 of 7)?

Sustained Fire Event
Position: Standing, ready, two hands, with strong side and weak side stages.
Distance: 25 feet.
Target: D-1 precision target. This event is conducted in 2 stages. Both stages must be completed in the same session to qualify as one completed course of fire.

• Stage 1 strong side: 5 shots in 20 seconds.
• Stage 2 weak side: 5 shots in 20 seconds.

A total of 10 shots per target. Possible score per target: 100.
Rating requirements: Acquire 10 targets, 5 with a score of 60 or better and 5 with a score of 65 or better. The 10 targets do not have to be fired in succession or on the same day.

Ok the distance seems right, and now there's a time constraint. They still want 100% on the target, but notice that the area of the target becomes important. Note that these are essentially "paper plate" targets in size, so they're a fair bit smaller than "standard" police targets.

Here's a clip on the LA police qualifications:

Without defining what is good (which the article doesn't do), how do you determine if a police force is shooting accurately? Maybe via comparison to other cities? They do compare it to LA, but then again, the size and environment of the city is vary different between LA and NYC as should be readily apparent. I'd be curious what the differences were between NYC and Chicago are, and why that wasn't used in the article.

t would seem hard to say with any certainty what is a good percentage for accuracy until the paper plates start shooting back.

Is the .308 dying out as a hunting round?

I've been considering a scout rifle project based on a Remington 700 series that I own chambered in .308 Win. After poking around for a little bit, it would seem that some manufacturers think this is still a viable (economically) round and some are more keen on the magnums and newer rounds. For example:

Manufacturer	Number of Rifles in .308 Win
Mossberg	0
Thompson / Center	0
Smith & Wesson	0
H&R	2
Ruger	7
Remington	18
Beretta	21
Browning	23

Mossberg: They've only recently been pushing their rifles, so this isn't that surprising, especially considering they're only fielding two models currently.

Thompson / Center: I was very surprised they don't offer a barrel in .308 Win. I wonder if this is a technical reason (doubt it) or there just isn't demand for it from people would buy one of their rifles? I'd guess that anyone that gets a T/C might already have a normal rifle in .308 Win?

Smith & Wesson: Again, a bit surprising, especially given their rifles seem to be tactical in nature.

H&R: Only two offerings. However, they only field five different series of rifle so this isn't as bad as it might seem.

Ruger: Only seven offerings, and they do have a variety of series.

Remington: Eighteen offerings. Still, it seems like the 30-06 is a much more available (if not more popular) chambering for their rifles. Additionally they seem to really be pushing the magnums...

Beretta: 21 offerings mostly in the Sako, Tikka, etc series. I was a bit surprised they offer so many, but I'm pretty unfamiliar with Beretta in general.

Browning: 23 different rifles are offered in .308 Win. Given that the entire BLR series (Browning's lever action rifle) can take this cartridge it certainly helps Browning's numbers.


I really need to make a chart of all the rifle chamberings for each of the major manufacturers and graph that out to see what the trends look like. Perhaps that would show if they .308 Win is less popular or dying off.

A new Rambo movie?

Apparently there's a new Rambo movie coming out! While I really like the first (and if you listen to the DVD with the commentary, it's actually quite interesting), they did get progressively worse with each add on. However, there's been nothing to see at the movies in a while, so I may head out to see this in January.

Here it is (via YouTube):

and in case that's bad, you can view it on Apple's trailer site right here.

Is a minigun an option on your vehicle?

Apparently someone does think that putting a MiniGun on a Suburban might be a good idea. I'd guess we're talking about private security firms, but there have been times in rush hour that it would seem like a good idea (obviously joking).




DillionAero appears to be a company entirely focused on bringing miniguns out into the world. And here I thought that we had to rely on a former Minnesotan governor to show the true value a minigun can offer your discerning forest hiker. Check out their videos section.

Spray and pray

There has been quite a push lately in the non lethal weapons realm. Kimber in particular has been pushing the LifeAct "pepper" spray device in a variety of gun magazines. Advertised at ~$30 it is on par with most pepper spray products, while having a smaller size.



Initially I was interested in that I know that Kimber produces quality products and like most I'd prefer my wife carry "something" as opposed to "nothing" sometimes. For some reason, I had thought this thing would shoot out a jet like a micro water gun, but that's far from correct.



As you can see from the video, it's much more like a compressed jet of liquid flying out of this device instead of a weaker stream. Kimber lists the range as 2 to 13 feet which seems reasonable given the size and cost of the device.

On the other hand, I've seen a couple of advertisements for the Avurt IM-5 launcher lately.

It's a much more expensive option (at $300 US) but also works quite differently from the Kimber device. As explained in the video below, it fires (with sound!) a pepper spray "paint ball" that explodes on contact. From the video below, it would certainly seem like it has more stopping power than the Kimber device. Of course, it's quite a bit bigger and with 10 times the cost, you'd hope it'd be a "better" device.

Check out the video:




Let me know if you have any experience with these products.

USMC 232nd Birthday

Today is the 232nd US Marine Corps Birthday! (via link)

A gatling gun LED flashlight

While Surefire surely has a hammerlock on the tactical light accessory market, this flashlight looks like it would pack a punch. While it's 240 Lumens of light output, the 100,000 hours of continuous on looks interesting.

via Uncrate

An AK-47 burns worse than a toaster, a Saiga 12 goes boom, and other recent adventures

Keith (a college buddy of ours) just made it back from Iraq last month, and after relaxing back home, stopped by on his way back to Texas. Jon and I decided it was entirely worth a day of leave to take Keith out to the gun range and get some new pictures, but couldn't talk Old Ike into leaving WSMR for the day. I've heard that "a day at the gun range doesn't count against your days here on Earth," and I'd say it's a philosophy that Jon and I subscribe to pretty well. 'Course we're both from Kansas, whereas Ike is from Colorado, so maybe that has something to do with it...

So we packed up The Element (yes, I know) and headed out to the range bright and early on a nice Friday morning. The days are starting to actually cool down here, in sunny New Mexico, and being a Friday we were hoping to get a quiet range for our little group. While there were a couple of other's out there (I'm convinced Las Cruces is the place retirees choose if they want a nice public range nearby, and they don't want to be up in Raton), we did manage to grab a couple of benches to ourselves and setup shop.

Keith has been full time National Guard for a while and spent most of his time overseas (Bosnia and Iraq so far). While we all grew up shooting, I'd say that the shooting bug bit most of our crew recently; not so with Keith, who got an AK-47 and 2,000 rounds of ammunition for his 18th birthday from his dad (retired highway patrol and now gunsmith).

'course he's from Kansas too...

We had several new guns to test out that day:

• Remington 700 in 300 Win Mag
• Saiga 12
• AK-47

and I hope to get the movies from that day up on the sight soon. We tried to fill out the regular targets (cantaloupe, car door, etc) and we did some silhouette work as well. Look for a future post when I get the movies online.

- Frank

New Ruger GP 100 review

I've had my Ruger GP 100 revolver for about 6 months now, and finally felt like it was time to write up a review. See it the review over at stoppingpower.info. Let me know if you have any additional questions, and I'll try to get them answered.


Ruger GP 100 review

Jobs board added

I've added a new jobs board that may be of interesting to StoppingPower.Info readers. It's powered off of Simply Hired's Job-o-Matic application. Their application allows anyone (including me) to stick a job board up on their web site, link to it, and have the ability to accept new job postings for $X dollars for Y days.

Given all that, I threw up a job board that's filled with "hunting fishing gun" related search terms, so that StoppingPower.Info readers might find a new job if they're looking for one. Given the limited searches I've done on the job board, it sure does seem like Cabela's is really on a hiring binge.


StoppingPower.Info Jobs board

Added a news section to StoppingPower.Info

I installed pligg this weekend, and started a news section on the site. Take a look at it on:

http://stoppingpower.info/index.php/News

We'll keep track of news that is related to StoppingPower.Info's goal of becoming a shooting almanac site.

New Target - Pistol Training Cube

Like most shooters, eventually you run into a day where you’re lacking in pop cans, tired of paper, and have shot most of the other destroyable items in the household. One of our cohort decided this was the perfect time (combined with his new Mini-14) to try out one of Just Shoot Me Products, Inc. pistol training cubes.

The basic cube is only $50 (there’s a couple of targets that are cheaper, but most are more than $50). The cost didn’t really bother me assuming the company’s claims of holding up to “thousands of rounds” held up, especially given the additional safety margin these targets offer your standard metal plate.

Results:

The .45 ACP and Mini-14 videos are the longest. These were the first set of firearms we tried out on the cube, so we spent the most time capturing video on these shots. The cube took the worst beating of the day on the .223 rounds pushed out by the Mini-14. You can see severe gouges that the round inflicted in the “plastic”. However, it should be noted that this cube is rated for pistol rounds, and we were obviously way outside the envelope with the .223 round. I wonder if the rifle cubes are made from a different compound, or are just thicker and able to take more punishment...

The cube actually caught one of the .45 ACP rounds as you can see in the video. We actually couldn’t pry that round out of the cube it was in there so tight. However, subsequent shots caused that bullet to fall out, with no sign that it had been there (I guess the plastic is “self healing”).

I’d like to make a minor note on the .22 rounds. I’m sure some of you are thinking “it’d be a better video if you had hit it more,” but this was our “introduce a friend to shooting day” so those shots are by a complete beginner. Not bad really, given she’d been shooting for about 30 minutes, and it was the first time she’d been shooting – ever!

I’ll post again as we inflict more damage on the pistol cube and let you know how it holds up. If anyone else has some information on these cubes, let me know.

Meanwhile, you can also take a look a the review that Jon wrote up on StoppingPower.Info.

- Frank

New Target Writeup - Frying pan

The same day we did the Car door videos, we also went ahead with a frying pan. “Why a frying pan?” you might ask (much like my Dad did). Well, it’s a bit complicated.

I took the family back home to Kansas in June and did the whole “sweat in the humidity thing” for a week. Kansas is great, but if you’re from there, you know the summer humidity saps your spirit and calls for showers several times a day. While my son was down for a nap one afternoon, I took the opportunity to user my in-laws broadband (yeah, they have the Internet in Kansas, despite what you might hear on the coasts), and checked up on the site.

I firmly subscribe to the “measure what you value” school of thought, and consequently use a couple of analytics packages (Google Analytics and Clicky) to see web site stats and keep up with its “health”. On that particular day, the number of hits had gone up a fair bit, and as I dug into it, it became apparent that a number of them were coming in from Italy. Apparently, a group of guys were debating various pistol stopping powers, and had referenced the site in their conversation/debate.

My first thought was “Italy?”




But given a bit to think about it, it’s really not very surprising. Beretta, Rossi, and Benelli are common enough names in the firearms world. Realistically a lot of their arms are made all over the world (of the various components). Naturally, I was interested, but I don’t speak Italian. Google Translate only goes so far, but I ran the page through it, and finally got down to the important question they seemed to have of “I wish they’d shoot something harder.” Of course, we aim to please, so I posted my reply (via Google Translate again) asking what targets they’d like to see. And we finally get to the punch line, because they requested:

A frying pan

(Of course they also requested an iron, but I wasn’t too sure I wanted to shoot one of those, as there’s a fair bit of metal in them. Comment on this if you want). Anyway, we returned to sunny New Mexico, and my wife hit up the local Goodwill and got a couple of frying pans. The first (and the only one we’ve shot so far) was a standard, garden variety frying pan. Not terribly thick, but a good representative of the kind you’d get at Wal-Mart. The other was a cast-iron pan, and we haven’t taken a crack at that one yet, because we’re still debating the necessary safety issues involved in that one.

Results:

While stout, the frying pan didn’t hold up all that well to most of the pistol rounds. The diminutive.22 LR round caused a dent, but didn’t penetrate as most of us expected. The .38 Special also didn’t penetrate when shot out of the Ruger GP100 (pistol). If you watch fairly closely, you can in fact see the bullet break up on impact. The same round out of a Winchester 1894 penetrated with no problem however. A number of factors could have led to the different outcomes.

1. It could be that the shots were in different enough spots on the frying pan, that it isn’t really an apple to apple comparison.
2. There’s much less velocity for the round coming out of the 6” pistol barrel vs the 16” rifle barrel.
3. Other?

The other two pistol rounds we tested (.40 and .45 ACP) didn’t have a problem with it either. And in the theory of completeness, we tested the .223 from a Mini-14, and got the expected nice little puncture hole expected from a rifle round.

Let me know if you have any questions.

- Frank

New Target -- Door results

Two weekends ago, we finally took a truck door out to the range to test out. It was the same ’79 Ford truck door as described earlier. All of the shots took place at 25 yards or more. We placed the truck door with a slight forward cant, so that in theory the ricochets would be less likely to end up coming back at us.

Results:

.22 LR from a Ruger Mark I

We started off with the .22 pistol, as it seemed like that would be the least likely to penetrate, and therefore the most likely to ricochet. Given that it was an entirely metal door, and not a plastic door like you find in most cars these days, we were rather surprised at the penetration of even the little .22 LR round.

The “little round that could” entirely penetrated the front door skin, and made a hefty dent on the back skin. Recall that this is from a Ruger Mark I with 6” barrel from 25 yards. We didn’t have one at the time, but it would be interesting to see the difference once you pushed that same round out of a rifle.

Sledgehammer

I managed to talk my brother-in-law into smacking one of those “two hits for a dollar” cars when we went to an Arts & Crafts show back in Williamsburg, KS. While not a firearms-related event, most people have a passing acquaintance with the force of a sledgehammer, and it’s a lot easier to compare outcomes when you use an item that everyone actually understands. Of course you’re getting a much blunter strike, and it’s fairly easy to see in the video the shockwave that spreads out from each impact. I found it interesting that we didn’t even get a tear in the outer skin from the hammer. I’d guess that this is actually the type of trauma that car manufacturers actually plan for; this seems much closer to a side impact than any of the shooting tests we actually perform.

9mm, 38 Special, .40, .45 ACP, and .357 Magnum

All of these standard pistol rounds penetrated with no problem. As the videos show, each generally has a nice little whole in the front, and various size exit holes in the back. The most definitive seems to be the .357 Magnum, but given it’s the most powerful (in terms of pounds of force at that range), it wasn’t really a surprise.

See the various pistol videos

12 gauge shotgun with buckshot and slug

While the 12 gauge has been an undisputed champ in our tests so far, this was the first metal object we’ve really tested. The slug again performed as expected and left no question about penetration. The entry hole was actually bigger in diameter than a 12 gauge shell, and we could easily still wiggle it around.

The buckshot on the other hand was rather interesting. Generally, we got a good amount of penetration on the front skin, with a rather wide pattern. Remember, we’re still shooting from 25 yards, and from what I’ve read (see my review of The Tactical Shotgun), buckshot has an effective range out to 20 yards. So we’re getting a lot of spread (as you can see the entire door took strikes but there isn’t any area that’s easy to see as the focus). The back skin was heavily dented, but suffered only one or two penetrations. As stated in many a place, the effective use of the shotgun is heavily dependent on the round choice matching the situation.

.223 and .308

While widely different in size and power, for our purposes we’ll group the .223 Remington and .308 Winchester for this write-up. Again, both were fired from 25 yards. Neither round really slowed down on hitting the first skin. From the exit video on the .223, it’s apparent that the round started to tumble after hitting the first skin. That’s fairly interesting, in that none of the other rounds we shot that day exhibited that same behavior.

The .308 didn’t slow down on hitting the back skin and the shot is pretty much what you’d expect from that round at that range.

I’d say the tests proved worthwhile. Some things went as expected (.308) while others we’re a bit more interesting (.22 and buckshot). Of course, the complete set of videos is located over on www.stoppingpower.info.

See the world and meet new people

When you start to actually getting into testing various rounds and firearms, you start to meet some really interesting people. At this point, we’ve tested:

• Cantaloupe
  
• Popcans
  
• Interior walls
  
• Phonebooks

So the question came up of “What to shoot next?” Well, a car door seemed like a logical next step. Where do you acquire a car door? Well, after calling around town for a bit, I was given the number of an auto salvage place in town.

Lady: “Hello?”

Me: “Hello. I’m looking to get a car door.”

Lady: “Ok, what make and model?”

Me: “Oh, I don’t care, any make and model will do…”

Lady: “Um…ok…let me get back to you…”

Needless to say, I wasn’t very hopeful that I’d get a callback. Surprisingly enough she called back in about 20 minutes, and said $20 would let me cart off any door. Well, it seemed a bit steep (considering we’re just going to shoot it), but off I went out to their place to get it.

About 30 minutes later, I pulled up their office/garage and walked in the door.

Me: “I’m here about a car door.”

Lady: “What make and model?”

Me: “Oh, I don’t care, any will do.”

Lady: “Oh yeah, (turns to the side), here’s the guy I was talking about.”

A guy who looks like he actually works for a living comes out from the back office.

Guy: “So what are you going to do with the door?

Me: “Oh, I’m going to shoot it. With a gun.”

Guy: “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

Me: “Well, my friends and I shoot various things, video tape them, and then put them up on the Internet for people to see. A lot of people from all over the world stop by and see what various rounds do.”

Guy & Lady: “Oh…”

I walk out with the guy and we get into what looked like a beatup Gremlin, and we go speeding off through the junkyard (it was pretty large actually). After a minute or so, we arrive at section of just doors.

Guy: “So what type of door are you looking for?”

Me: “Oh, well, what would you want to see shot?”

Guy: “Well, we could go with something modern, like a Saturn, but they’re all plastic and not going to stop anything.”

Me: “Yeah, that’s probably true.”

Guy: “Ok, here how about this, let’s get a truck door. One of these (heads over to a pile). Ok, here you go. ’79 Ford, back when they made them in steel.”

Me: “Sounds good.”

Given it’s a ’79 Ford truck door and by no means compact, I started wondering how we’re going to get it back to the shack given we’re in a Gremlin (or something). But I see that we’re just going to go with the “through it up on the roof and hold onto it with a hand out the window” approach.

On the way back, the guy mentioned that a lot of people call about complete cars, and then blow them up for movies and whatnot. So my request for a car door wasn’t the oddest thing he had heard.

We’re scheduled to head out to the range this weekend, so hopefully we’ll get some new videos up soon.

True Stopping Power!

I saw this online via digg earlier today:

Teen Scares off Burglar with Samurai Sword

The best part of it for me is the look on the kid's face when he describes what the criminal looked like after he hit him.

New Site design is live

The new site design when live last night around 1am MDT. Hopefully it'll present a better view of what I'm trying to accomplish with the site and "get to the point quicker". Time will tell.

We've got forums

It's fairly important to get some feedback on the web site as we progress, and as part of that process I've added in forums to the stoppingpower.info web site this last weekend. Of course I'm the only poster on there right now, but hopefully that will change over time.

Additionally, I've added a feedback page that will email me your comments, suggestions, or complaints. I don't mind having a critique of the web site, but please offer a suggestion of how you would fix it if you do have some criticism.

Both feedback and forums are now available on the site menu.

What holster do you use?

Some friends and I have been looking into holsters a lot lately. I mentioned that holsters seems to put us into more of the gun nut crowd, to which Jon replied "we're already shooting cantaloupe, I think we're already there."

There's a decent article up on Defense Tech basically of the tune "why you don't want a thigh holster," which seems like it was worth the read. We hadn't really talked about them all that much, other than "they look cool". However, the more I read up on them out on the net, the more I see people say that's about all they do. So we're back to the old classics:

Hip holster (strong side or cross draw)
Shoulder holster
Belt holster (side, back, etc).

The belt holster has a lot of advantages going for it. Jon's trying it since it came with his Springfield 1911, and we'll see how that works out over the long term. You can't deny it makes the gun more handy at the range. I went with a shoulder rig because my revolver is a 6" long GP100 and I didn't want to have it banging into my hip. I'm just going to have to try it out for a while and see what I think.

Anybody else have a favorite?