The weekend is nearly done, but I can’t let it finish without some gun and survival talk.
Last weekend, you may remember, Old Friend’s Older Brother, his Lady Friend and Lady Friend’s Daughter were my guests at the range that I’m a member of. During the event, we tried our his new gun, a .45 ACP made by Hi-Point Firearms. Ever since, I’ve been poking fun at him for buying such an ugly gun. (Go ahead, click on that link. Just be sure you haven’t eaten recently.)
I also noted that I was surprised at how well it shot. I also made that comment to him. I hope that didn’t cause what’s happened now–he’s went out and bought one of each caliber they make. Aru-g-g-h! That’s one in .380, 9mm, .40 and his original .45. This is a lot of ugly to cram into one range bag.
The .40 is on order, so there was only the .380 and the 9mm to check out. The .380 is a flippin’ disaster, the 9mm a close second. (Apparently, the .45 may have been an aberration.) First, the .380 has what I sincerely hope is a manufacturing defect. I’m not going to note it here, except to say that if I owned this gun, if would be back in the hands of the dealer as soon as they opened Monday morning. I will say that it isn’t a safety-oriented problem.
Outside of that little issue, the thing experienced more failure to feed (FTF) problems than I think I’ve ever seen in a single place. In addition, it shoots so low that even using the entire elevation adjustment won’t bring point of impact (POI) up to point of aim (POA). Another reason to take it back.
The 9mm was joyfully free of manufacturing defects and FTF problems, but suffered the same POI vs. POA problemand to the same extent. Since they’re both apparently made on the same frame, with the only apparent difference being the barrel/chamber, I’m not too surprised.
The .40 and the .45 ACP are also made in this manner. I’m hoping he has better luck with it when it arrives.
I, one the other hand, had much fun with my Walther P22 when it decided to become a jam-o-matic. As best I can tell, it decided that the CCI Blazer ammo it had digested all of last weekend was not up to snuff this weekend; it refused to extract the fired case about 50% of the time. A switch to CCI Stingers cured that problem. Shooting the same Blazer ammo through a Ruger 10/22, we experienced no problems. Go figure.
I also had time to experiment some more with my beloved Springfield M1911. Don’t get me wrong it, shoots fine–no mechanical problems. My only problem is that I can’t hit the broad side of a barn about half the time.
Fortunately, I had another of my friends, whom we shall call the Mountain Man, join us for this particular range session. He was able to give me some feedback (no noticeable flinch, which was what I thought was going on), plus he was able to take the gun and completely show me up on accuracy. The gun will hit what it’s aimed at, if you do your part. I. obviously, am not doing my part.
As a long gun sort of guy, I’ve noticed that I do best with pistols that have a “3 dot” type sight. Out of the 4 I own, 3 have 3 dots and one has a non-3-dot. Guess which one I can’t shoot worth a flip. Bingo–the non-3-dot. So I’m going to be doing some shopping for a 3-dot style sight to replace the Novak sight the gun came from the factory with. I know many people love Novaks, but they just don’t work for me.
Enough of guns. on the Survival side, I’ve finally gotten that golf cart article posted on my website. Feel free to check it out and give me some feedback.
On another survival note, I’m starting to accumulate silver, as a hedge against inflation and What May Come. If you’re new to such things, I have a brief essay on the subject here.