Amanda Collins had a permit to carry a concealed firearm on the night she was brutally raped on the University of Nevada's Reno campus in October of 2007.
She had just left a 10:00 pm class and was headed to her car on the ground floor of a parking garage—not 100 feet from the campus police building. She was careful to check around as she approached her car when she was grabbed by a 6’2” 200 pound man. He held her down and told her not to open her eyes. He held a gun to her temple, and she heard him click off the safety.
But even though Amanda had a CCW permit that night, she wasn't carrying a firearm because the university is a “gun free zone.” Gun free, that is, for those who respect the law. It was not so for the attacker, who turned out to be a serial rapist and murderer and who now occupies a place on death row.
A week after the attack on Amanda, another woman was raped on campus. Then came the abduction of Brianna Denison, who was raped and murdered. Her body was found in a field days after the attack.
Amanda is confident she could have defended herself that night. “I would have at some point during my rape been able to stop James Biela,” she said. “I know, having been the first victim, that Brianna Dennison would still be alive, had I been able to defend myself that night.” Read more
Walter Reddy, ambushed at home and in court by the State of Connecticut, needs your help to defend our Second Amendment rights.
In this day and age, it seems that just believing in the Constitution can make you an enemy of the state and a target of the government. A friend of the Second Amendment, and Founder of Committees of Safety in Connecticut, Walter Reddy, just learned this truth the hard way.
In late January, 2011, Walter had a conversation with a man he believed to be his friend. A few days later, this man reported to the local police a list of inflammatory statements Walter had supposedly made to him, but his friend refused to sign a statement for the police verifying he heard these statements.
Walter's home was raided by a SWAT team on Valentine's Day, and his tiny collection of firearms seized.
What horrific thing is Walter to have said? Allegedly, he said intemperate things about a bank claiming to hold his mortgage and the police. Even if true, these days who among us hasn't said derogatory, even intemperate things — particularly about banks? But the police report doesn't stop there.
It next claims that Walter “might do something violent,” does not believe in federal taxation, and the FBI stated he was a “person of interest” regarding domestic terrorism. Read more
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Inside this issue:
Red dots for ARs
Semi-auto sniper rifles
Gun Review: Browning T-Bolt
Reloading the .38/40
Gun shows, auctions, classifieds and more!
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A Gunbroker auction of nine Ruger collectibles, firearms that netted $18,250, was then donated by Ruger to the USA Shooting Team. Ruger executives presented a check to the team during the recent NRA Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.
“Some of the firearms were consecutively numbered pairs leftover from government contracts and stored in foil wrap for more than 30 years,” said Buddy DuVall, executive director of the USA Shooting Team Foundation. “Others were low serial number guns from popular Ruger lines. All were rare enough to generate considerable interest from buyers. We're very grateful to Ruger for thinking of us as the recipient from these online sales.”
The firearms were auctioned at GunBroker.com.
Highlighted items included:
• Consecutively numbered pair of U.S. Service-Six revolvers—sold for $1,525.
• Consecutively numbered pair of U.S. Service-Six revolvers—sold for $3,050.
• New Model Single Six with serial number 69-00000—sold for $1,676.
• Mark I pistol, serial number 19-79751—sold for $2,126.
DuVall noted that Ruger has been a longtime and generous supporter of the USA Shooting Team. Contributions like this one will help the team prepare for international competitions, including the Olympics.
The gun-dealing thing started for me in the early 1980s. I see a lot of guns. It is a rare day when something crosses my path that I have not encountered before. Well, this is not one of them. I did see two Sjogren shotguns in my life before I bought the one shown here.
One was on the shelf at a Ft. Worth, Texas, gun shop in the early 90s, the other I can’t remember where. I recognized the one in Ft. Worth as something I had seen before, somewhere. Probably a pawn shop I stopped at on one of my gun-buying trips. Of course I had no idea what I was seeing; just a funny looking 12-gauge semi-auto shotgun. So, when I see some guy trolling this thing around at a Ft. Wayne, Indiana, gun show in November, 2008, I had to chase him down.
He had no idea what it was. Just a 12-gauge that he said shot OK but he wanted a newer pump shotgun. He wouldn’t set a price, wanted to trade. I rarely have current production shotguns in stock so he moved on. A couple hours later I see he is still carrying the gun. He told me nobody knew what it was nor would they make an offer. I did. And I was the new owner of a Sjogren 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun. (Don’t ask me how that is pronounced: sho-gren is what I have been calling it. Never heard anybody else say it. Could also be so-gren or jo-gren.)
The Sjogren shotgun is a semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun made in the first decade of the 20th century. It was actually on the market before the Browning Auto-5, making this the first self-loading shotgun commercially offered. (At least I can’t find any indication of an earlier model). The Sjogren is not listed in Standard Catalog of Firearms, yet. Nor is it included in the Blue Book of Gun Values.
My research on this gun found very little information besides a booklet I am using as reference for this column. “The Weapons series No. 6 The Sjogren Shogren Shotgun and Sjogren Military Rifle” by Roger Marsh, copyright 1947. This seven-page booklet appears to be self-published. I also found reference to an article in a Danish gun collector’s magazine called Vapentidningen no. 7- 2000 by Jens E. Perto. I was not able to find that article, just a few quotes from an Internet message board.
Swedish inventor Carl Axel Theodor Sjögren had three Swedish patents from 1900, 1903 and 1905 linked to the gun. A Swedish businessman called A. Karlsson ordered 5,000 guns from Töjhusafdelningen och Haandvaabenverksäderna in Copenhagen, Denmark in August, 1907. Only 12-bore guns with 70-centimeter 3/4 choke barrels were made, but an extra 500 60-centimeter-long barrels with cylinder choke were also made.
The last gun was manufactured in 1909. Serial numbers range from 1001 to 6000. My Sjogren has pre-WW I German commercial proof marks. It is probably a vet bring-back from WW I or WW II. The gun shown in the Marsh book has English proofs from the same era. Additionally, US patent 954,546 was issued to Carl Axel Theodore Sjogren on April 12, 1910, but I found no record of commercial importation or sale in the U.S.
The Sjogren system has a fixed barrel and a fully locked breechblock. It utilizes what is called inertia driven operation to extract and eject the fired shell, then reload the next shot. The recoil (or rearward inertia) of the whole gun operates an internal locking block that stays forward at the moment of rearward recoil, this allows the bolt to open as breech pressure drops and extract the fired shell. A similar system is currently in use in the Benelli M-1 shotgun.
I have an idea how this works but I’m having a hard time putting a description of this operation in words. Normally, I will just take an unfamiliar gun apart so I can see how it works. However, the disassembly instructions in the Marsh booklet convince me that this is one gun on which I will forego my usual exploration. There are too many odd shaped springs and parts that appear somewhat fragile. Breaking a part on a rare gun can really reduce its value. So I will simply quote Mr. Marsh’s description of the gun’s operation:
“With the bolt fully forward and locked, the gunner presses the trigger, drawing down the connector and with it the sear, which is mounted in the inertia block. The firing pin drives forward to strike the primer. As it does so, it jams the locking block into the locked position by interposing the firing pin between a ledge on the locking block and the bolt body.
“As the gun fires, we find that the inertia block, true to its name tries to “stay put” when the gun recoils. Initial recoil of the gun exceeds initial recoil of the inertia block by about 1/16th inch, thus compressing the accumulator spring between the recoiling gun and the nearly non-recoiling block. In effect, the block moves forward in relation to the gun during initial recoil. The accumulator spring then asserts itself and throws back the inertia block. The sear carries the firing pin back so that it no longer jams the locking block. As the inertia block continues to the rear, the fingers of the assembly key strike the levers of the locking block rotating it to the unlocked position and carrying the whole assembly to the rear, extracting and ejecting the fired shell.”
Still can’t figure this one out? Sorry, I can’t help you. Not much more I can say about how the Sjogren functions.
I usually try to test fire unusual guns when I write columns about them but as with the disassembly, I just don’t feel comfortable shooting this thing. When firing, the whole bolt assembly slides to the rear towards the shooter’s face. There is a large steel block at the back but…no. Even though the person I bought it from said he used it I’m not going to try.
Sjogren also made some prototype military rifles in a 7.6mm cartridge that utilized the same mechanism but they never got beyond that. One was reportedly tested at Bisley, England, but did not perform well in those trials.
The Sjogren was not manufactured after 1909. Apparently the sportsmen of the world were not ready for this interesting design. The Browning A-5 of the same era was a success so we must conclude that the Sjogren did not fail due to its semi-automatic function. It probably did not hold up with heavy use.
Several have made their way to the U.S. in the last century, despite there being no commercial importation when new. Some were undoubtedly “war trophies” brought home by U.S. serviceman from WW I or WW II. In the last decade numerous used sporting guns have been imported from Sweden due to increased gun control laws there. Mixed in with these have been a few Sjogrens. The Simpson Ltd. gun collector’s website listed two of them for sale at the time I wrote this column.
The asking prices were $1295 for a 90 percent piece with a cracked buttplate and $500 for 60 percent gun with a repaired buttstock. They have been up there a while with no takers.
This article appeared in the December 6, 2010 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.
Setting up new reloading dies, Workman raises his shell plate and then screws down all three dies to gently touch the plate.
Admittedly, my cluttered loading bench has always been the haven for top-notch dies from Lyman, RCBS and Hornady, for both rifle and handgun cartridges.
That’s not a confession; it’s a statement of fact as well as confidence. My reloading dies from all three outfits have provided thousands of rounds for practice, competition and serious hunting in a variety of calibers. Most of my deer have been killed with reloads, and back in the days when I regularly participated in pistol matches at a local gun club, the only ammunition I ever used came off of my progressive RCBS press.
Redding sets a ring of incredibly smooth titanium carbide into each of its carbide sizing dies.
For straight-wall handgun cartridges, I strongly recommend carbide dies, as they cut down on reloading time and that makes for less work at the bench and more time at the range or out in the hills. The need for case lube is eliminated, and when a reloader really gets cranked up with a progressive press, it is possible to turn out scores of cartridges in an hour.
At the 2010 SHOT Show in Las Vegas, I encountered long-time pal Robin Sharpless, now with Redding Reloading Dies in Courtland, NY. A veteran in the firearms industry, Sharpless wasted no time in getting me to visit the Redding exhibit, where we engaged in a chat about reloading. And that’s when he introduced me to Redding’s titanium carbide dies.
“It’s a lot harder and slicker,” he commented, “and if you look at it under a super high power microscope, you would see (a surface) that looks like rolled river stones.”
Slick is great, and hard is even better when it comes to reloading dies through which thousands of cases will be resized. This was particularly intriguing to me since my younger son had recently acquired his own .45 ACP Sig Sauer P220, and while I love him dearly, I’ll be damned if I’m going to slave over a bench reloading ammunition for him to shoot up! (That said, he got the full course about how to set up new dies by raising the shell holder or plate to the top of its stroke, then running the new die bodies down through the press frame to “just meet” the shell plate, assuring full-length sizing, precise crimping and expansion of the neck.)
Redding, Sharpless explained, had come up with a nifty improvement in lock rings that features a tiny piece of soft lead between the front end of the retaining/tightening screw and the threads of the steel die body. This lead acts as a buffer to prevent damage to the threads, and one needs to give the ring a good rap where the tightening screw is located to free up the lock ring. Once it is tightened down again, the lead is right there doing its job.
Sharpless told me that Redding’s titanium carbide dies have been around for the better part of two decades, and that several commercial ammunition manufacturers use them in their operations. After setting up and running some rounds through them, I can understand why.
Alluding to my kid’s handgun purchase above, detailed in this space recently, was a subliminal reminder that good shooting, and especially good handgunning, comes from practice, and reloading cuts down on the cost of that endeavor considerably. Sure, there is the initial outlay for a press, dies, and components, but in the long run — and believe me, I’ve made that run along with countless other shooters — the reward is worth it, in money saved, in time afield and at the bench (all enjoyable), in accuracy and accomplishment, and in many cases, meat in the cooler. You simply cannot put a price tag on all of that; it’s a personal thing.
Dies are set up to allow finger-tightening, rather than require tightening with a screwdriver or small wrench.
Redding’s dies are all hand-polished, and the titanium carbide rings are set into the steel dies just so. It’s hard to explain it in precise terms, but run a thousand rounds through a sizing die, and you’ll know the importance of that.
One thing I discovered upon opening the three boxes of sample dies Sharpless supplied for this review is that the gang in Courtland thinks of little details. All three boxes included a spare decapping pin, and if you’ve ever busted one of these off during a reloading session, you know just how important that might be.
Now, decapping pins — which ride down through the center of a cartridge case at the end of the steel rod inside the sizing die — are darned tough. Made from tempered steel, they are built to last, but they can break. I’ve broken one or two over the years (which says plenty about the amount of ammunition I’ve reloaded, not to mention my present age!) and it was a pain in the butt because I didn’t have an immediate replacement.
Another thing is the die box. Made from tough plastic, there are shell holders molded into the outer top and bottom that fit a variety of cartridge case heads. In my humble estimation, that is just plain darned clever. Who’da thunk it?
Now, with the addition of Reddings to my reloading dies, does that mean my other loading dies are going to be retired? Oh, not a chance! Something I learned from personal experience in loading .308 Winchester and .30-06 Springfield rifle cartridges is that one really ought to have two (or more) seating dies for every cartridge, one for seating bullets with crimping cannelures, and the other for taper-crimping non-cannelure projectiles.
For handgun cartridges, one seating die ought to be set up for seating nothing but ball or roundnose lead bullets, and another for seating jacketed bullets or semi-wadcutters, both with cannelures. Indeed, if one has three seating dies, each should be set up for different handgun projectiles.
What about my other carbide sizing dies? Are they now to gather dust? Ha! Fat chance of that. I’ve spent too many good years with them to simply set them aside. Nope, they got a good bath in Hoppe’s No. 9, a nice rub down with a soft cloth, a complete wash with degreaser, and they went right back to work.
I’m a tyrant…with a son’s pistol to feed.
This article appeared in the July 19, 2010 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine. Click here to learn more.
Recently, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) filed suit in U.S. District Court in Virginia challenging the constitutionality of federal and Virginia provisions that bar handgun sales to non-residents.
As an SAF press release explained, “SAF is joined in the lawsuit by Michelle Lane, a District of Columbia resident who cannot legally purchase handguns because there are no retail firearms dealers inside the District.
The Supreme Court's 2008 Heller ruling struck down the District's handgun ban, confirming that individuals have a constitutional right to possess handguns.”
Yet, as a resident of the District, she can’t legally purchase a handgun in neighboring Virginia. SAF and Lane are represented by attorney Alan Gura of Gura & Possessky, PLLC, who won both the Heller ruling and last year's Supreme Court victory in McDonald v. City of Chicago.
“Americans don't check their constitutional rights at the state line,” said Gura. “And since Michelle Lane is legally entitled to possess firearms, forcing her to seek a non-existing D.C. dealer to buy a handgun is pointless when perfectly legitimate options exist minutes across the Potomac River.”
“This is an important issue in the era of the national instant background check,” added SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The NICS check should allow law-abiding citizens like Miss Lane to exercise their Second Amendment rights regardless their place of residence.”
Recently introduced federal gun legislation would codify and greatly expand the definition of those barred from owning a gun because they suffer from broad, umbrella-like definitions of mental health problems. Mental health advocates, however, say legislators reacting to “deranged” people going on shooting sprees are “completely missing the point.”
Last week, New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy introduced the Fix Gun Checks Act of 2011, a nearly-identical resolution to that introduced in the Senate in March by her New York colleague, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer. Both bills include a section dedicated to further codifying in federal law what it means to be “adjudicated as a mental defective.” The proposed change would label any person a “mental health defective” who appears to “lack the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs,” or is “compelled” to receive counseling or medication.
Other, seemingly more obvious, definitions of a “mental health defective” include anyone who has been found criminally insane, found incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of mental deficiencies. Read more
ArmaLite has announced that it is now accepting orders for its M-15A4 Carbine chambered in 6.8 SPC II. A very limited production run of this extraordinary firearm will begin in June, and will not be repeated in 2011. Interested shooters are encouraged to submit orders immediately as this run is expected to be completely pre-sold.
ArmaLite’s 6.8mm carbine is especially well-suited to hunting, the company says, and is powerful enough to meet the minimum energy requirements of many states for taking medium sized game such as deer. At the same time, the 6.8mm is lighter than the 7.62, reducing the weight of ammunition carried into the field. As part of the AR-platform family, this carbine is also more versatile and ergonomic than traditional hunting models. The 6.8 is built with our mid-length handguard and gas system to provide the best in form and function.
About: ArmaLite has one of the broadest product lines in the firearms industry. We manufacture and sell semiautomatic rifles in a variety of calibers including 5.56mm and 7.62mm, long range super-accurate bolt action rifles in calibers including .308 Winchester, 300 Winchester Magnum, 338 Lapua, and 50 BMG, and classic 9mm pistols.
For fast follow-up shots, a bolt gun loses every time to a self-loader. Here, they’re just watching suspicious activity on Highway 1 in Zabul Province. DoD photo by Spc. Joshua Grenier, U.S. Army.
The classic image we have of snipers is that of a lone shooter, or one with a steady companion, waiting in silence in a jungle, or in a ruined building, peering through a scope. Watching patiently, he finally sees his quarry pause, and squeezing the trigger, makes the shot from an impossible distance – so far away that those around the now-retired target don’t know which direction the shot came from, or where to direct their response.
I had a Special Forces trained sniper once tell me “life begins at the triple zero.” Meaning, it was best to work at 1,000 yards or more.
This image has so distorted the reality that just getting things done properly became a problem. For instance, the classic Army and USMC sniper rifle was a Remington bolt gun, called the M40 in the Corps, and the M24 in the Army, chambered in .308. On top was a scope of 10X, 10 power, with a mil-dot ranging reticle in it. With it, the school-trained snipers could estimate range (using the surveying ability of the mil-dot reticle) and poke holes in targets out as far as the bullet was stable. (More on that in a bit.)
Well, when it came time for the police to adopt some kind of counter-sniper rifle, and training, guess what they used as their base? Yes, the .308 bolt gun with 10X scope. Now take a guess, a wild guess, at the average distance of police counter-sniper shots? I’ll wait while you ponder the question. Ready? 53 yards. That’s right, the maximum distance we used to be shooting handguns at, and some still do, is the average for a scoped rifle, from a rest for police. Now, imagine what the field of view is through a 10X scope at 53 yards. Pretty small.
Why such a short distance? A few things: for one, most distances in urban areas just aren’t that far apart. Oh, you can see a building 600 yards away, but SWAT isn’t going to set up a perimeter that far out. They haven’t the manpower. Second, no police chief, sheriff, SWAT commander or watch commander who has to say yes or no to a shot (commonly referred to as “the green light”) is going to give the nod to anything other than a last-moment shot, at the closest possible range. Picking someone off at 600 yards would be quickly followed by a raft of lawsuits (which are going to happen anyway, things being what they are in the modern world) and pilloried for the decision.
Now, that is not always the case. The Texas Tower incident, where Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the bell tower on the U-T/Austin campus, was a long-range affair. He was on the 29th floor observation deck, and he made successful shots out past 400 yards. His efforts were greatly hampered by the residents going home, getting hunting rifles, and returning fire. (I cannot imagine such a thing happening today. The first police to arrive then, joined in.
Today, they’d be arresting those firing back, even if it meant getting shot by the “guy in the tower.” Such is modern life.) But back to the modern police and military perspective: What if you, the police precision marksman, need a follow-up shot? Well, for the military shooter, planning on whacking a general at 1,000+ yards, “follow-up” is anything they do before the chopper picks them up. For a police officer, follow-up is what you need to do before the felon falls to the ground, and still tries to fire the weapon he has in his hands.
When we went into Iraq, things seemed to go as planned. In the wide-open spaces, long range was desired, and snipers were expected to work as they normally would. But one of the things a lot of critics don’t seem to get about combat is the interactive nature of it. It isn’t like a video game, where “level seventeen” is always the same.
The police took their lead from the military, and it is a good thing the Barrett wasn’t in use when the police started.
A lot of those who think we can create peace, love and understanding by means of talk, good intentions and proper PR seem to think that combat (or law enforcement, for that matter) is like a video game. If you know what will happen on level 17, then you can cruise right through. And each time you have to go through 17 on the way to 18, 19 and 20, the “bad guys” in level 17 will do the same thing. I can only imagine that people with such a child-like view of the world have never even experienced so much as a fistfight in the grade school playground.
Combat is more like football: you go in with a plan. If it works, you keep doing it. If it doesn‘t, you change. If the other guy finds what he’s doing isn’t working, he’ll change. Oh, in the case of a lot of the insurgents, they refused to change, and got shot for their efforts. Ideology, political or religious, can prevent change. But once the stupid or stubborn ones are killed off (and let’s be clear and blunt about this; we’re talking combat) then those that are left will change. Adapt. Find what works, or at least works better.
Which is what happened in Iraq. After standing up and slugging it out, the bad guys figured out that IEDs worked better. So, they started setting bombs. Our guys adapted by changing the doctrine of how snipers worked.
Previously, snipers worked in two-man teams. (And, lest you think I’m revealing state secrets, this is common knowledge amongst those who pay attention.) They worked for commanders higher in the food chain than platoon or company commanders.
Even battalion honchos were out of the loop at times. Snipers early on were viewed as being just as valuable if they saw and reported good intel as they were if they whacked bad guys. A sniper who is “working for” the regimental commander won’t even have a way to talk to the company commander whose area he’s “hunting in.” Barring an emergency, or a need to not get shot at by his own guys, the sniper would not even talk to, or be known to, the company commander.
The Iraqi-based bad guys started setting IEDs, and snipers went out with the idea of getting into a good “hide” and either shooting or reporting on the bomb setters. Well, when you’re out there on your own, two-man teams are less than optimal. In fact, they’re stupid. Two guys can’t watch the possible bomb sites and simultaneously watch their own backs. And if the bad guys come for them (someone spotted them, someone figured out the likely locations for hides, etc.) two guys can’t hold off more than a handful of attackers. Especially if one of them has a bolt-action M40/24.
Because bolt guns are slow. Oh, a trained bolt-gunner can fire 10 aimed shots in 70 seconds at Camp Perry, but that didn’t help. You see, school-trained snipers aren’t trained to work a bolt as if they were on the line at Perry. And 70 seconds is forever. If a team shows up to set a bomb, you want to bag them all, not just one or two. A bolt-gunner can get one, maybe two if they are far from cover. If someone has you under fire from an adjacent building while their buddies are assaulting up the staircase that is your exit, 70 seconds may be the rest of your life. As a result, there is a big push in the services for a semi-automatic sniper rifle and for bigger sniper teams.
In the mountains, where you might need range, a .308 rifle can be quite useful, Here Spc Rockwell scans the ridgeline. DoD photo by Spc. Eric Cabral, U.S. Army.
You see, the bad guys were no dummies. An IED wasn’t just a-guy-with-a-shovel-and-a-satchel affair. Proper location mattered. So, once they’d scouted out a good spot, there would be a team on the job: the explosives expert (or what passed for one, given the time and place), the digger or diggers, the security team, spotters and so on. Anywhere from four to 10 guys. Clearly, it would be expeditious to bag all of them. That way, the skilled/experienced ones will be removed from the lists, to be replaced by less-experienced ones. Also, it becomes a lot more difficult to recruit new bomb-team members, if each time a team gets “made” they all get shot.
Now, on the sniper end of things, it becomes more difficult and involved. First, you can’t send out just a two-man team. Once things shifted to a sniper-vs.-bombers basis sending two-man teams out was a good way of ensuring they didn’t come back.
So, it became a team job. A team would be three or more pairs of sniper-spotters with another handful of security members. You could have a dozen men trying to sneak through the streets, set up, and watch unobserved, to cover a likely bomb area or areas. The bigger the group, the more difficult it was to insert the team and pass unnoticed. And the team needed a bigger area, as you couldn’t just pack a dozen guys (and all their gear) into a small corner room of an apartment building.
The snipers also had another problem: gear. If you’re going to whack bad guys at distance, you need a bolt gun with a 10X scope. (And remember, the guys doing this were limited to the tools in inventory. No fair in saying “they should have been using XYZ rifle. The government didn’t have any.) But an M24 is not what you need if the team gets spotted on the way in and you find yourself in a fight to extricate yourselves from the mess. For that you need an M4. So, what to do? Pack everything? An M24, ammo, spotting scope, shooting mat, etc. and an M4 with a go-bag full of loaded magazines? Even if you’re a twenty-something trooper in peak physical condition, that’s a lot of stuff to be humping.
So a semi-auto sniper rifle becomes very attractive. Especially if you can swap uppers. For the insertion part, you’d be cat-footing in with a 14.5-inch .308 rifle and an Aimpoint or EOTech on it. The short length and the no-magnification optics mean you’d be using a fast and nimble hammer on the tangos across the street, the ones who stumbled into your team while you were heading to the objective. If you don’t get spotted and you make it to your intended area, you have time to set up. Once in place, you take that upper off, and pull the 20-incher with 10X scope upper out of your rucksack. Now you’re set to get the job done at 600 yards and more.
Extending the magazine of a bolt action only delays the inevitable: it will always fall behind a self-loader for repeat shots.
Now, this is not a problem that is new. When the repeating rifle with smokeless powder, was new, suddenly riflemen had range. They could dependably hit a man-sized target at impressive distances (on the target range, anyway) compared to what the black powder rifles of the time could do.
As a result, rifles were set up for distance. Common military sights of the time, when set at their lowest setting, would produce bullet impacts 6 to 8 to 10 inches over the point of aim at 100 yards. The idea was simple: hold your sights on the belt buckle of the opposing soldier, and at any distance out to combat maximum, in some cases well past 400 yards, you’d get a hit. Beyond that, you’d then adjust your sights for range.
In WWI, with the trenches 100 yards apart or so, you have to figure a lot of soldiers were guessing as to how much under they had to hold, to get a hit.
Even in WWII, with a lot of wide-open areas, most engagements were at relatively close distances. Much sniper work was done in the ruins of the various cities on the Eastern Front, as the Soviets pushed the Germans back. Even when the fight was in the wide open steppes, the shots were often just a few hundred yards or less, since the first order of getting a decisive shot is to spot the target. If you can’t see him, you can’t shoot him. It is rare that range becomes the only issue in the mix of variables.
In another instance of the interactive nature of combat, Major Thomas Ehrhart in his monograph “Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afghanistan” reports on the adaptation of the Taliban combatants. The average US soldier is not trained to shoot beyond 300 meters.
That’s the maximum distance of the computer-controlled pop-up targets he or she shoots at. (Marines shoot on ranges longer than that, but only to 500 meters.) Worse yet, since a soldier only gets 20 rounds for 20 targets in the qual course, they are routinely told to ignore the 300- and 275-meter targets and save those shots for the closer targets to ensure a hit, and thus a passing score. (Passing is 12 out of 20, or 24 out of 40), so a Taliban at 400 meters is relatively safe from most Army shooters.
The minimum distance at which artillery, air strikes, naval gunfire (probably not an issue in Afghanistan) or a Spectre gunship can fire is not as close as you’d think. As a courtesy to those providing indirect fire support, the requester will mention when things are particularly troublesome at the moment, with bad guys at a close range: the fire request will include the term “danger close.” Basically that means “For what you’re sending, we’re at or inside the minimum safe distance the field manual calls for. Please be careful.”
How close is “close?” Well, the calculated minimum (it involves the average dispersion of fired rounds, the distance fired, the standard deviation of fragment spread and distance traveled, and for all I know, the phase of the moon) are listed in various field manuals. What I’ve been advised are working distances are as follows:
You’ll note that while the organic firepower that a squad, platoon or company might posses will cover past the 300 meter range, the larger stuff leaves a gap. Also be aware of a small detail, but an important one: the minimum safe distance depends to a certain degree on the distance to the artillery battery, i.e., time of flight.
The longer a projectile is in the air, the longer air currents can work on it. A mortar firing “charge zero” (the minimum the things will fly) will be dropping shells only a hundred yards or more downrange. For that, “danger close” could be 20 yards, if you really trust the mortar gunner to know his stuff. Time of flight is just a few seconds. A big gun, such as a 155mm, or an eight-inch howitzer, can have a flight time of more than a minute at their maximum range. For that transit time, you want to have them start far out, and work their way closer.
Now, the calculated safe minimum instance, and the one actually in effect by careful troops who are depending on well-trained support is a lot less. But you still won’t see 155s coming in on a hilltop 5-600 meters away, not on a regular basis, not first rounds, and not unless it is a real emergency.
Snipers traditionally worked in pairs: one shooter, one spotter. Recent experience has forced some changes in that.
There’s also the matter of time. If a savvy small unit leader has planned ahead, he will have already picked likely hilltops and such on the map, places that might be useful to shoot at his unit. If he has done so, and coordinated with the local artillery battery, they can speed things up. The artillery battery can have the guns laid on each position in sequence, as the infantry unit approaches it. They can have pre-calculated the firing solution and have rounds one step from ready. If he does that (and the artillery unit is willing to go to the constant work involved) he can easily have shells on target starting one minute after calling for fire.
If he hasn’t, but the battery is ready and waiting, and he has a good forward observer, the first ones will hit in three or four minutes, and adjusted and hammered soon after. From a cold start, with guns not registered, and scrambling to re-lay the gun, it can be 10 minutes or more before you have hot steel raining down on your problem du jour.
One minute is a long time, four an eternity. If the Taliban are smart (and at least some of them have to be) then a smart guy will have his ambush team fully trained and instructed. In one minute, an ambusher can have two full belts downrange from each machine gun, two or three rounds from each RPG, and half a dozen or more rounds from a 60mm mortar. And then be packing and boogeying off the ridgeline before the first artillery round is incoming. Four minutes? He’s out of the severe hazard zone, and almost in the next zip code.
Now, there’s one wrinkle for the bad guys in this disparity between safe distance and ordnance: the Spectre gunship. For those who don’t know about it, it came about as an improvement over “Puff the Magic Dragon” in Vietnam. That was a C-47 with a row of machine guns (later, miniguns) pointing out the windows. The pilot would bank around a particular spot, and trigger the guns, and be firing a whole row of machineguns that would pour rounds into the area.
The military is moving from just bolt guns to adding semi-auto (and select-fire) sniper rifles. This is a LWRCI REPR, done up in flat dark earth.
The Spectre is simply a C-130 with miniguns, 25mm, 40mm cannons and a 105mm howitzer pointing out the left side. And as a vast improvement over the C-47, the C-130 pilot banks but the gun crew use video monitors to precisely refine aim and place shots where they need to be. I have heard from those who have been there that a Spectre can place its shots safely (after all, the distance involved is almost inconsequential by artillery terms) as close at 50 meters. That is, a circling Spectre can put a 105mm shell right through the window of the building across a boulevard from your position.
You’re probably thinking “This means we can drop explosives where we want.” Yes – but. The max speed of a C-130 is 260 knots (299 mph). However, it isn’t going at max while banking and hammering. The speed there (it depends on altitude, gross weight, etc. ) is more like 150-175 mph. Which means it is a big, fat, slow-moving target for surface-to-air missiles. As a result, use of the C-130H and C-130J models are restricted to night-time use in Afghanistan.
Once they figured out there was a gap, the Taliban took advantage of this gap. Inside the artillery or air strike danger zone, but outside of the effective rifle fire, the Taliban had only to worry about belt-fed machineguns, and the 7.62 ones at that. Yes, a sniper rifle would be very helpful, but it isn’t exactly an even match: a bolt-action sniper rifle with a five-round magazine, vs. a belt-fed 7.62, on a tripod, at 800 meters, with belts of ammo ready, and a spotter to call the range.
Again, a semi-auto sniper rifle would be very useful in those instances.
You might be asking “Why not pack the mortars or grenade launchers?” Simple: they weigh a lot and can’t be man-packed across much of a distance. The M224 60mm mortar, bipod, baseplate, tube and sight weighs 46.5 pounds, and each round weighs 3.75 pounds. The three-man crew can’t carry it and any significant amount of ammo as well. So, if you plan on having a mortar and 20 rounds with you, you have to figure out how to pack an additional 150 pounds, once you account for the mortar and gear, plus the ammo and their packing tubes. (You do not pack bare mortar shells in your gear. Pack it in the storage tubes, or prepare to be shunned by all.)
So you need an additional vehicle to haul the crew and mortar. Or a dedicated mortar team.
Now, imagine a Taliban commander, watching an approaching American convoy of up-armored Humvees. If he knows what the one with the mortar crew looks like, that’s the one he’ll instruct his best machine-gun crew to work over first. If not, as soon as he spots the crew setting up, guess who gets his attention? Ditto the vehicle armed with a Mk 19 grenade launcher. And if the convoy looks too tough, he’ll just let them pass and clobber the next one.
And none of this helps a patrol on foot.
My apologies for giving you so much info on mortars, artillery and such, but I think it is important to understand the context in which the modern sniper works these days.
The US armed forces have been using a semi-auto for a while; the M110, a .308 semi-auto, also known as the Knight’s SR-25, a descendant of the AR-10. While loved by some, it is also the recipient of some criticism. Across the Atlantic, the British recently adopted the L129A1, made by LMT.
Now, the effectiveness of a system is not just a matter of features, specs and cost. Training matters. In many instances, training can matter more than gear. But, being the gearheads we are, we spend a lot of time looking at gear and features.
This article is an excerpt from the Gun Digest Book of the Tactical Rifle. In Part II Patrick Sweeney will range test and review some of his favorite semiautomatic sniper rifles. Click here to read Part II
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Remington R-1 1911
S&W Governor
Gun Review: Browning Buck Mark
Custom Rifles
Gun shows, auctions, classifieds and more!
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Two concealed carry bills to be introduced – a permit/licensing bill and Constitutional Concealed Carry (no permit)
Permit bills contain Department of Justice Gun Owner Registration Lists for Licensees (gun owner registration, the NRA does NOT mention this detail)
Serious threat that permit bills will override Constitutional Carry, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
Cosponsors needed now for Constitutional Carry bill (LRB-2007/1)
Public hearings scheduled for next week
BREAKING NEWS:
Madison, Wis. – On Wednesday, May 4, 2011 Wisconsin state republicans leaked three Legislative Reference Bureau drafts of concealed carry legislation that quickly began making the rounds among gun activists on the Internet. The bill drafts have not been introduced, which suggests they may have been released simultaneously to “test the wind.”
Two of the bill drafts — LRB-2033/1, the Senate version and LRB-2027/1 the assembly designation — are permit-to-carry bills that create a licensing scheme for concealed carry.
In an alert just released by NRA, they claim that “The second is a “shall issue” carry license bill that allows Wisconsinites to obtain a license from the state Department of Justice (DOJ) in order to carry a concealed weapon. This license bill offers some additional benefits. These include the ability to use the license to carry a concealed weapon in many other states while traveling and the ability to carry concealed weapons in school zones (1000-foot area surrounding school grounds).”
Aside from the “additional benefits” NRA is using to sell the license bill, it is not clear if passage of the permit bill will statutorily override a simple removal of the ban on carrying concealed weapons without a license as proposed in the Constitutional Carry bill draft.
The NRA also relabeled Constitutional Carry as “permit-less carry,” a detraction from the unified terminology understood by gun owners. Further, the NRA’s Bill Summary does not clarify the issue of whether passage of the permit bill will stop Constitutional Carry in its tracks, or co-exist with it. This fact will no doubt not be welcomed news by the “NRA can do no wrong” crowd, but anyone assessing the situation honestly will want to watch this legislative sleight of hand very closely — once a permit-based weapons bureaucracy is built, tearing it down again and restoring true right-to-carry (Constitutional Carry or, Vermont-Style Carry) will be an even harder uphill battle. Read more
The good citizens of Wisconsin have been denied their right to self-defense for too long and the time has now come to make the Personal Protection Act a reality! It is time that Wisconsin joins Free America and the 48 other states with concealed carry laws. The bills have been circulated for sponsorship and it is critical that you contact your state Representative and state Senator to urge them to cosponsor this legislation.
There are two bills being introduced in the 2011 legislative session that allow Wisconsinites to carry concealed weapons for personal protection. The first is known as “permitless carry” and it simply eliminates the current prohibition against law-abiding citizens carrying concealed firearms. Many citizens already carry openly and this will allow them to conceal their firearms. It also eliminates the “cased and unloaded” requirement for handguns in motor vehicles. State Senator Pam Galloway (R-Wausau) has introduced this bill in the Senate and there is currently no companion bill in the Assembly. Its designation before assigned a bill number is LRB 2007 and both senators and representatives are able to cosponsor it.
The second is a “shall issue” carry license bill that allows Wisconsinites to obtain a license from the state Department of Justice (DOJ) in order to carry a concealed weapon. This license bill offers some additional benefits. Read more
The stock and rail are installed and the wood is showing off its grain a bit.
While the M-1 Carbine has been denigrated for lack of stopping power and inaccuracy, it has a lot going for it and, yes, it can even be improved.
Long a favorite of mine, the old M-1 is a favorite of many others, too. Except for gun writers, who seem to hate the thing. This hatred is caused, in my opinion, by a lack of modern ammo development and, I think, a bit of snobbery. Long has the Carbine been denigrated for lack of stopping power, inaccuracy, and an anthropomorphic lack of small round things.
This has always bugged me, because as a short little half-Asian kid in the COLD swamps of Wisconsin, a better deer rifle could not have been found. So, I have traded my uncle’s collectible Winchester for my somewhat beat up CMP Inland. Of course, before long the gunsmith’s curse, the desire to spiff it up became too great.
An image from the rear quarter shows the whole assembly, rail, stock, and dot.
Did You Ruin a Historic Piece?
So what can be done? I didn’t want the “sporterizing” or butchering like so many of these rifles have been subjected to, but I wanted it to be nicer than it was. This carbine languished in some dank linguini warehouse in Italy for the last 40 or 50 years and the stock looked it, with lots of grease and oil stuck in it. The surface was splintery and otherwise generally rough. The solution to this problem was a new stock, which I ordered from Fulton Armory in Maryland.
This was a brand new walnut stock cut with precision. There was only one thing that did not fit perfectly and it shouldn’t be expected to. The wood surrounding the recoil plate at the back of the receiver stood quite proud, but that was to be expected. In all other areas the stock and handguard fit perfectly and that was in a word, suh-weet. There was also no need to prepare it, as it had already been fully shaped and sanded. I was very pleased with this stock and highly recommend it for replacement or upgrades.
To the accurizing. Referencing The U.S. .30 Caliber Gas Operated Carbines: A Shop Manual by Jerry Kuhnhausen had already proven useful for function and safety checking the rifle. Now the small accurizing section at the back was used to give this humble columnist a clue. Also referenced was the Civilian Marksmanship Program’s website (www.thecmp.org) where a link to accurizing M-1 carbines resides.
There was little disparity of import tween the two, and they said, in a nutshell, the recoil pad needed to be securely bedded, as did a spot under the barrel at the front of the stock. Clint McKee from Fulton Armory was also a wealth of information.
Beginning the Work
The Vanderhave formula stain allowed the author to (in his humble opinion) do a superb job duplicating the reddish color of the original walnut stock.
Using a vertical mill, I removed wood from under the recoil plate and around it, leaving a very slight shelf around the edge of the screw hole area for locating purposes. To fashion a tube for the recoil plate’s screw (so as no bedding contacted it), I cut and unrolled the rolled aluminum handle of one of the acid brushes in the Brownells bedding kit, then re-rolled it around the recoil plate screw, and then cut to size.
I then inserted this resulting tube into the hole in the stock and the bedding compound was then applied around it. (I bet Brownells didn’t see that one coming). The recoil plate, thoroughly coated with release agent was then smushed into the bedding compound and seated on that little locater shelf left behind. Of course the compound proceeded to ooze about and the stock around the recoil plate then needed some cleanup.
I then inserted the action in the stock in order to insure that the recoil plate was properly aligned straight ahead, and tightened the screw. Once the compound was sufficiently set, the action, and then the recoil plate were removed to allow the compound to finish hardening.
I next dug out a small channel just behind where the inner fingers of the barrel band wrap around the barrel at the front of the stock. The Kuhnhausen manual indicated placing the front bedding pad under these fingers but I didn’t want to mess with that so I placed this bedding pad just behind them. I figured since the pad was just about in the same place, its function being to provide a secure base for the barrel, that it should work out just as well a half inch displaced.
Next was to modify if necessary the recoil plate, so that it caused the barrel to sit slightly high above the forend pad, thus causing a certain small amount of constant tension to be placed on the barrel when the barrel band was installed. Fortunately, there was about 1/8 of an inch of float there inherently, so I decided to leave it be and not attempt to add more.
The last step was to stain the stock with the Vanderhave formula XIII from Brownells. This stuff is supposed to duplicate the dark, slightly reddish color of the old WWII stocks. I thinned it out a little using alcohol and used an old, yet still white, sock to apply it to the wood.
I rubbed in a rather dilute coat to act as a sealer and a less dilute coat to actually stain the stock and handguard. Following up, two nice coats of tung oil were rubbed in and the stock sat for a few days before I used a 1000-grit piece of sandpaper to lightly take the shine off the top coat of tung oil. Lo and behold, it looked pretty darned good, having a slight reddishness and being just a teensy shade lighter than the oil-saturated stock the carbine came in.
The new stock on the left and the old on the right, seen post bedding and finishing.
The final piece of the equipment upgrade was to add a scout rail, which replaces the handguard. This rail was made by Ultimak and obtained from Brownells.
This handy rail directly replaces the handguard with an aluminum section topped with a Picatinny rail. All sorts of stuff can be added here, like a scout style extended eye relief scope, but I just put on a cheap, little micro-red dot sight. It should be noted that installing anything onto this rail will remove the iron sights from play, and anything placed there may wind up getting rather warm from heat transfer off the barrel. Then it was off to the range.
Range Report
I test fired for groups prior to the upgrades and with my somewhat poor abilities got roughly 3-inch groups at 50 yards, shooting 10-round groups. Not five. Not three. Anyone pawning off five-shot groups and calling them representative is telling fish stories. Anyone using three-shot groups, or best three of five, is flat out lying to you, pulling fabrications from a certain posterior fissure. The more shots, the better, and 10 or more shots will open up a bit from 5 shots, hence the reason gun writers and manufacturers like to use five-shot groups, but it just isn’t a valid scientific representation.
The 10-shot group is little better, but the difference between a 10-shot and a 20-shot is almost always far smaller than the difference between a five and a 10.
Post upgrade, the best group I had was nine shots out of 10 in a 1-inch ragged hole, with the tenth another inch away, a “flyer” if you will. Still, a 2-inch 10-shot group is a lot better than a 3-inch 10-shot group.
All post-upgrade groups shot at least slightly smaller than pre-upgrade. Reloads from Wisconsin Cartridge Corporation, and factory Remington UMC were used, with the UMC getting the best groups. Incidentally, I also loaded up some Barnes 100-grain X-bullets (no longer available) and they shot pretty crappy. Six inch group. I really hope it was poor reloading technique.
This article appeared in the February 14, 2011 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.
Top to bottom, the popular concealed carry barrel lengths – 4.25-inch, 4-inch and 3-inch.
If there is a legitimate criticism of the 1911 as a carry gun, it is size and weight. But the 1911 is also available in smaller size configurations known as the Commanders, Defenders and Officers Model 1911s. Choosing from among these models you'll be sure to find a pistol to match your needs.
If there is a legitimate criticism of the 1911 as a carry gun, it is size and weight. The pistol is thin but long and heavy. Do not let anyone convince you the 1911 is dated. It is simply from another era in which handguns were designed to save your life and were not based on liability concerns. The pistol is designed to be as fast as a good boxer, with a well timed and devastating blow foremost.
The Colt Commander is the result of a desire for a lighter and handier 1911. While the story goes the Commander was designed to offer the military a downsized pistol, there had been prototypes of a short .45 kicking around Hartford before World War II.
The use of aircraft grade aluminum for the frame allowed a very light and handy concealment piece. The Commander retains the full size grip of the Government Model. This allows comfortable firing and a good sharp draw. Size has much to do with confidence and control. Although it is appreciably lighter than the Government Model, the Commander is a controllable handgun – with practice.
These choices are pretty simple. They are all aluminum frame pistols with barrel lengths of (top to bottom) 5, 4 and 3 inches.
With the Series 70 production run the Combat Commander Colt was introduced. This is simply a steel frame Commander. The Combat Commander is now known as simply the Commander while the aluminum frame Commander is the LW Commander. The steel frame Commander offers excellent balance. The problem with reducing the length of the pistol as far as reliability was the higher slide velocity, which was addressed by spring technology.
But then we also had a shorter spring that had to exert more pressure. The shortened slide length reduces the total reciprocating mass but also alters the way the magazine presents the round to the breech face. In the end, it was a wonder the Commander was so reliable. It’s a great pistol.
The Officer’s Model was the original short 1911, with a 3.5-inch barrel and grip shortened enough to cut magazine capacity by one round. Today most compact pistols have 3-inch barrels. The Officer’s Model demanded considerable revision of the design but the 3-inch pistols even more so. In order to accommodate the sharper barrel tilt in a short slide pistol, the barrel no longer used a barrel bushing. The Commander used a standard bushing, although it was shortened.
The Defender features a belled barrel that contacts the slide directly. One of the standard 1911 locking lugs was removed in order to allow the barrel to recoil proportionately more to the rear of the pistol. These design changes were essential in order to produce a functioning short slide handgun.
The 3-inch idiom has proven very popular. The Officer’s Model is now out of production and seems unlikely to return. These three idioms – the Government Model, the Commander and the Officer’s Model – were once the defining descriptor of 1911 frame and slide sizes. Today Government Model, Commander and Defender are more apt descriptions of the increasingly popular compact and ultra-compact descriptions.
A new and very popular handgun is the 4-inch barrel 1911. Some of the best of the modern 1911s are 4-inch guns. These include the Kimber Pro Carry, the Kimber CDP, the Para TAC FOUR and the Springfield Champion. The 4-inch barrel 1911s are more in line in size and weight with the popular service pistols from other makers such as the SIG P226 or Glock Model 23. They are superior service pistols and take much drag off of the uniform belt. They are also ideal concealed carry pistols.
They are available in both aluminum frame and steel frame versions in weight ranging from about 26 to 33 ounces. These pistols feature the belled barrel type lockup as they are too short to utilize a barrel bushing properly. In my experience these are very reliable handguns. They clear leather quickly, get on target quickly, and offer excellent hit potential. They also rate high on the smile test, with most raters reacting favorably to the handling and accuracy potential of these handguns.
While heavier than some pistols, the steel frame Commander is very controllable and well balanced.
A LW frame 1911 is not for non-dedicated personnel. The pistol demands attention to detail and proper technique to master. I find the lightweight 4-inch barrel 1911 easier to control than a polymer frame .40 caliber pistol, but there is time and effort in the equation. The difference is that you will be able to reach a high level of competence with the 1911 that may elude shooters using the polymer frame pistols. The 4-inch pistol certainly falls into the ‘if I could have only one pistol’ category. It is that versatile.
At this point you may reasonably ask for a recommendation on which 1911 is best for you. My recommendation is always to begin with a steel frame 5-inch barrel Government Model. I might add that it is best to purchase the best quality handgun you can afford for a good return on performance and future trade-in.
If you are beginning with a concealment pistol, then the steel frame Commander is an excellent first choice. I simply do not recommend jumping into a lightweight frame 1911 without considerable experience with the Government Model. A good 4-inch barrel steel frame pistol may be concealed, and with proper selection of a good holster such as the inside the waistband holster illustrated from Milt Sparks, then you will have a good comfortable platform for carrying the pistol.
There is more weight but as you begin your shooting career you will appreciate it.
Moving to the lightweight 3-inch barrel pistols such as the Colt Defender is a gradual process. As an example, I began my 1911 journey with the Combat Commander. It was some time before I considered the smaller pistols, and I found many of them not as reliable as the Government Model. Times have changed. The Colt Defender and the compact Kimber pistols are another story. These handguns demand attention to detail but they are reliable, accurate enough for personal defense, and good examples of the gunmaker’s art.
Today we have 4-inch pistols with night sights and complete reliability – and frame rails as well. The LW Operator is a first-class all-around 1911.
They are not as useful for all around informal target practice and competition shooting but that is not their design goal. These are first class lightweight personal defense handguns. When you consider the snub nose .38s and double action only 9mm pistols in wide use, the Colt Defender as an example is a wonderful defensive handgun in trained hands.
The short sight radius of the Defender and the Kimber compact pistols may challenge marksmanship. A slight misalignment of the front sight is less noticeable when the sight radius is shorter than average. I recommend that any compact defensive handgun have good sights. Superior sights are an aid in hit probability, perhaps more important in the case of the compacts that with the full size handguns. Fit, feel and a long sight radius may be compromised in the compact pistols, but, just the same, these are first class defensive handguns.
Despite their short grips and short sight radius, the position of their controls is all 1911, and that means very ergonomic. Increased recoil is far from startling if you have began your shooting career on the Government Model. These handguns are a technical accomplishment well worth your praise and attention.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) recently announced that it had made $100,000 in “Challenge Grants” available to encourage and improve shooting sports programs at local Boy Scouts of America (BSA) Councils.
According to an NSSF press release, “The challenge grants by NSSF, the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industry, are available to qualifying BSA Councils that plan to strengthen and increase their activities in the shooting sports. Such programs teach Scouts marksmanship skills, firearm and range safety, teamwork and fundraising.”
“BSA Councils applying for a grant must specifically earmark funds for shooting sports programs and provide matching funds at least equal to the grant request. NSSF will provide funding to the first 50 qualifying applicants up to a maximum of $2,000 in matching support.”
“NSSF is taking its long-standing partnership with Boy Scouts of America to a new level with this challenge grant,” said Chris Dolnack, NSSF’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer. “With the shooting sports among the most popular Scouting activities, NSSF is proud to assist local councils in developing new and expanded opportunities for Scouts to gain knowledge of the shooting sports.”
Applicants may view NSSF BSA Council Challenge Grant guidelines and application procedures atwww.nssf.org/bsagrant. For more information, contact NSSF’s Melissa Schilling at [email protected].
Looking to go armed, but are stuck in the weeds as to what to arm yourself with? Here are 20 excellent concealed carry gun options that will keep you on the defensive.
Amanda Collins had a permit to carry a concealed firearm on the night she was brutally raped on the University of Nevada's Reno campus in October of 2007.
