A sense of where we are




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A moldy oldie review: The Singlepoint sight

Image
"I don't know just what it is, but I'll let you have it cheap." So said the fellow at the gun show, and that is how I came to have this thing in my collection. The Singlepoint is an ancestor of today's red dot sights. It created a stir back in the seventies. It was discussed in the English  Parliament . Its moment of fame came on the Son Tay  raid in the Vietnam war. It even got writeups in  Popular Mechanics  and  Popular Science , honors reserved for things that were maximally cool. By modern standards, though, it's a pathetic gunsight. It was a good try for its time, no doubt. It is an occluded eye gunsight (OEG), meaning you can't see through it. When you look in the end you see a black field with a red dot floating in it. You look at the target with your other eye and your brain merges the two images into one. Thus, you see the red dot superimposed upon the target. Well, sort of. It doesn't work perfectly. The effects of  pho...
Read more

A noisy trend: .357 compacts

Image
I notice that since November I have reported on three new .357 Magnum revolvers with SA/DA lockwork, three-inch barrels and compact frames.  Kimber was first, with a thumb-cockable version of their K-6, previously produced as double action only. Then came Colt's King Cobra, the up-gunned magnumized version of the new model Cobra .38. Ruger just introduced an LCRx in three-inch .357 form. It is a trend I approve. A gun in this general format is a very good balance of power and portability, range, and practical accuracy. It's a town-and-country gun useful for personal protection or for woods tramping. Each of these newly introduced guns has smooth lockwork that produces lighter double-action trigger pulls than older types, another development I heartily approve. I can shoot the old school Smiths and Colts and Rugers and so on, with their heavier triggers, but less pull weight doesn't hurt anyone's shooting ability. Not everyone will like the recoi...
Read more

Classic gun review: First generation Thompson Center Contender

Image
Including a pictorial on how to change barrels The Contender is a break action single shot. You can set up the gun as a pistol or carbine, depending on your tastes. Barrels are interchangeable and available in many calibers. The gun reviewed is an older model, made in the seventies. There is a more recent "G2" second generation model with numerous changes to the mechanism. In between the early model shown and the present G2, there were several variations in parts and design, most significantly a redesign of the barrel latch to make the gun easier to open. The review gun lacks the easy-open feature. More about that later. The Contender figured in a  Supreme Court case , which established that having a pistol and parts to convert it to a rifle did not amount to possession of an illegal short barreled rifle. Thus in a small way the Contender has a place in gun rights history. Of course, it is still illegal to assemble the pistol barrel to a receiver which ...
Read more