In the beginning the AR was a light, handy carbine. The M-16 had a relatively short fixed stock.
However, in a military rifle nothing can be allowed to go to waste. The hollow stock was soon redesigned with a trapdoor in the buttplate, and the enclosure was deemed large enough for a cleaning kit.
Most “old” stocks you’ll see will be “A1” stocks, with a trapdoor. In the 1980s, with the redesign of the M-16, the stock’s shortcomings were addressed. Basically, the old plastic formula was deemed too fragile. The new, A2 stock was made of tougher stuff. It was also lengthened by 5/8 of an inch. Why?
When shot prone, the old stock was a bit short for tall troops.
I find that I often have my cheek right against the carrying handle while shooting prone. If I’m not careful I’ll rap my glasses against the handle on each shot. Of course, not all troops are 6'4″ tall. And in the military you can pretty much count on those shooting for real having web gear and body armor on, adding length of pull.
But when shooting on the target range, in a shirt or jacket, the stocks were too short. So the A2 was lengthened. I even built a rifle for competition with yet-more length. Olympic Arms made (and still does) a stock filler that adds another inch to the length of pull.
With that on, I never had the carry handle hit me while shooting. However, making a rifle that is suitable for target competition is often counter-productive to combat.
What the military has found is that the A2 stock is too long for lots of soldiers and Marines in lots of the situations they face. Trying to handle a 20″ barreled, full stocked M-16A2 inside of a humvee or armored vehicle is very difficult. The Armed Forces have not decided to simply yank the A2 stocks off of every rifle. I imagine part of it is cost. It would cost a bunch of money to do so.
But it is also, and curiously, a matter of markings. If a rifle is marked “M-16A2” it is defined as having certain characteristics. If you take a rifle marked M-16A2 and you rebuild it into the M4A1 configuration, it would work just fine. It would also confuse the heck out of the supply system.
How do you note in the inventory system that a rifle marked “M-16A2” is actually a M-4A1 configuration? Every time someone does a count, they’d note it as an “A2” despite its sliding stock and stubby barrel. There isn’t room to over-strike and re-stamp the model designation. The bureaucratic mind simply boggles at the thought of exceptions.
No, if the Army is going to switch over to an all-M4 weapons issue, they’ll stuff the M-16A2s in storage and buy new M4s. But I digress.
When the stocks were changed from A1to A2 the buffer tube was not. The tube is too short for the A2 interior, so the designers included a spacer. The spacer is simply a plastic or aluminum cylinder to fill the gap.
Why couldn’t the new stocks be designed to fit without the spacer? Beats the heck out of me. For a longtime, I wondered: why not spec a new tube for the new stock, one that is longer, with a built-in buffer spring(or add-on on the buffer weight) to dampen felt recoil? I finally found out recently.
The plan was to make thenew stock longer, and make an improved short-lengthstock as well. That way, short-statured troops could have an option.
Well, as with so many good ideas, the government never got around to making improved A1-length stocks. (The government never met a good idea it couldn’t screw up.) Thus, all rifle-stock buffer tubes are the same.
It doesn’t matter if you install an A1, and A2,or some other rifl e stock, you’ll use the same buffer tube,spring and weight. You must not, however, get A1 andA2 stock screws mixed up. The A1 is the short one, A2 the long one. The A1 won’t reach if you’re trying to bolt on an A2 stock.
If you use an A2 stock screw to bolt an A1 stock on, the screw is too long: it will stick into the buffer tube. There it can easily be struck by the bufferweight while cycling, and eventually bust the buffer tube. Telestocks, however, are not all the same, nor do they ride on the same tubes.
The original A1 stocks had no trapdoor in the buttplate. I’ve seen a few, bolted to military surplus M16A1 rifles used by police departments.
They are short, light, handy and a tad fragile by today’s standards. But they are entirely useable.
And for someone building a retro rifle, necessary. The later A1 style has a trapdoor incorporated in the buttplate, with a hollow cavity inside the foam plastic for storage.
It was just large enough to hold a cleaning kit. The stock was changed for the A2upgrade, and you rarely see an A1 stock on a new rifle.
In the early 1980s the military (mostly the Marines)wanted an improved M-16. The Army wasn’t so hot on it, as they were (and still are, to a certain extent) pinning their future on a new rifle that would leapfrog past the M-16. (They’re still waiting.)
The A2 had a number of improvements, but the stock is our subject. The plastic formula was made stronger, the buttplate stronger, and the stock longer by 5/8″. Great for target shooting.
However, the extra length made the rifle tough to use for those bundled up in tactical gear. I’ve even seen short-statured officers in classes who were unable to use the rifle, the A2 stock was so long. How unable?
From being unable to post a passing score on drills or the qual course, to shooting perfect scores, simply from changing the rifle from the A2 to a telestock. If you are tall and long-armed, the A2 is fine.
Otherwise, it is too much of a good thing. However, it is common, and you’ll often find a standard rifle with an A2 stock on it, so you’d best be familiar with it. You can tell the A1 and A2 stocks apart by their length.
The 5/8″ difference is obvious. The buttplates are also different, the A2 being squarer on the edge than the A1. Once you’ve had a few seconds to compare them side-by-side you’ll be able to spot them afterwards. One addition I made to one of my ARs is the Olympic stock extension.
Inserted between the stock and the receiver, it adds a full inch to the length of pull. I installed it on an A1 lower I have with an A1 stock on it. The length of pull comes out to an even fourteen inches. If I put an A2 stock on, it would be more than fourteen and a half inches.
When I’m shooting prone, with iron sights, I need that much to keep the charging handle from going up my right nostril. Unless you’re tall and gangly, and plan to do prone shooting with iron sights,you probably won’t need a stock extension. But it exists if you do.
In two days, Teddy O’Reilly will marry his college sweetheart, but tonight he’s going shooting.
A bachelor party should be a smashed-up cocktail of testosterone and adrenaline. As the best man, I’m in charge of the night. A week ago, I called Fred Harris Jr. at Deerfield Pistol and Archery Center in southern Wisconsin, a half-hour drive from the wedding site in Madison. For $175, our bachelor-party group will have the place to itself for two hours, including guns, targets and earmuffs. Ammo is extra.
When Fred was hired at Deerfield four years ago, he started promoting the range as a venue for private events. Shooting ranges love bachelor parties.
“We get at least a bachelor party a day, and on a busy weekend, we’ll see 10 bachelor parties on a Saturday,” says Mike Heck, range manager at The Gun Store, a Las Vegas, Nev., shooting range that fires off 100,000 rounds a week. “The vast majority of our clientele are people with little to no experience, and that’s increased over the last 10 years.”
Introductions
The drive from Madison to Deerfield is green and calm, the fields lined with young corn stalks and small herds of cows clustered near barns. I ride with Teddy’s father-in-law to be, Jim Lynes, who tells me about teaching his daughter Kristen (the bride) to shoot using the family’s double-barreled .45-caliber muzzleloader.
The three cars carrying the bachelor party pull up to the Deerfield shooting range, and we go inside, excited and talking loud. We walk toward a short, square man with a shaved head standing behind a glass case. This is Fred, the range’s firearms instructor; 32 years old with a gun on his hip.
“Who’s the guy that’s about to make the worst mistake of his life?” Fred asks.
Teddy raises his hand, and we all laugh.
Fred’s a character. He paid to have one of his guns painted pink, because, “I like to go to a range and outshoot people with a pink gun.”
There are 11 of us; two of Teddy’s new in-laws, one of his brothers, and eight guys from his high-school and college running teams. Eamon O’Reilly, Teddy’s older brother, is a Navy surgeon with two children and a constant smirk. Simon Bairu, who Teddy ran with at the University of Wisconsin, won the NCAA cross-country championship two consecutive years.
Fred leads us into a nearby room, which is empty except for a folding table, a few chairs and law-enforcement patches from across the country hanging in a long line high on the wall. Scott Whiting, who owns the range, is a police officer in a nearby town, and he traded for most of the patches at law-enforcement training events. The range now sports patches from as far away as Italy and Israel, and a Marine who uses the range even contributed a patch from an Iraqi police department (the words are in Arabic).
We’ll be shooting five guns, one for each lane in the range downstairs. There’s a Bushmaster AR-15 9 mm carbine, Smith and Wesson M+P .40 caliber, Glock Model 17 9 mm, Taurus Model 85 .38 special and Taurus Model PT 1911 .45 ACP.
Our cheerful band won’t win any marksmanship prizes. When Fred asks who has never shot a gun before, almost half of us raise our hands, and when he holds up the AR-15 somebody says, “I’m not shooting that thing.” He demonstrates the principals with an unloaded Glock, curling his thumbs around the butt “like you’re bumping a volleyball.” He tells us to keep our thumbs “high on the tang,” and discusses what he calls the self-induced evolution.
“If you cross your thumbs, the slide will come back and take a chunk of your knuckles off, and you’ll evolve to never do that again,” he says.
Finished with the basics of loading and safety (“Leave with the same amount of holes you came in with”), Fred leads us through a hall decorated with signed photographs of Brett Favre and then down a steep flight of stairs. Everyone makes nervous jokes about Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction. Now we’re in the small observation room, directly adjacent to the actual range, with only a soundproofed door for separation. Fred takes five of us at a time through the door to finish our tutorial and take a few practice shots.
Fire in the Hole!
The range is the width and height of a one-car garage, but 60 feet long, with stalls similar to those that flank a urinal. Each of the lanes has a narrow counter at waist level on which to set the guns when you’re not shooting. There’s a similar surface running the length of the wall behind the stalls, where we stack ammunition and targets.
After we take a few shots apiece, Fred leaves us alone with the guns and goes back upstairs. The serious shooting begins. I load one of the Glocks with four of five bullets and let loose. Wow. Shooting a gun for the first time is exhilarating and scary, like riding a skateboard down a steep hill. I was writing when Fred explained the thumb situation, and I don’t think I’m doing it right. Even though I only sent the target out to the 10-foot mark, I’m not causing the silhouette much harm. The closest I get is creasing its shoulder on my last shot.
I move one lane to my right and try the .38 Special, a pretty all-black revolver made by Forjas Taurus, a 67 year-old Brazilian company. I like this little guy. If I were going to have one gun, just for tomcatting around town, this would definitely be it. At first, I have some trouble. For some reason, nothing happens when I pull the trigger. I keep trying, and I can see the cylinder spinning away, but there’s no sound except the small click-click-click of the hammer hitting the shells.
Ah, the shells. The previous shooter left his empties in the gun. I flip the cylinder out and let the shiny empty shells fall around my feet, and I slide in five bullets. Game time. I raise the gun toward the target, one-handed this time, and squeeze off five shots. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, click, click, click. I keep pulling the trigger after the five; I like seeing the cylinder spin. Man. This is definitely my favorite gun.
I set the .38 down and watch the others shoot. None of us are very good, and unless the target is close, the silhouettes come back in about the same condition in which they went out. Everybody’s grinning like crazy men, though.
We shoot for an hour before the plastic bags of bullets empty out. Fred sent us downstairs with 200 rounds of 9 mm and 100 rounds each of the .38-, .40- and .45-caliber ammunition. Two guys jog back upstairs, and Fred sends them back down with another 500 rounds.
“The average person will shoot 50 rounds an hour,” Fred says, so we’re not too far below par in that department, at least.
“Look at Simon going downtown!” yells Bobby Lockhart, a track coach at the University of Oklahoma, as Simon sends his target out the full 60 feet and blasts away. “When I go back in there, I’m going all out, way downtown. I gotta try!”
Everybody’s covered in powder residue at this point, and I have black marks on my shirt from where I held a magazine as I filled it with bullets.
“Women dig that scent,” says Ben Porter as he sniffs his shirt.
Jim walks back into the observation deck nursing an injured hand.
“I wrapped my thumb around and took a chunk of my thumb off,” he says. “I evolved. Only have to do that once.”
Someone points out the first-aid kit bolted to the wall and observes that we’re lucky to have a doctor with us. Eamon is in his fifth year of residency at the Navy Medical Center in San Diego and says he’ll be going to Iraq when he graduates.
“Since I’m a surgeon, we didn’t do any weapons training,” he says. “I’m not going to be carrying a gun in Iraq.”
We shoot for just more than two hours, a lot longer than most groups at other ranges. The range manager at Las Vegas’ The Gun Store said most of their customers finish up in “35 to 40 minutes from beginning to end. The lines at Disney Land are much longer, I assure you.” That makes sense to me. When you’re not used to it, two hours shooting can feel like a long time.
Teddy, the husband to be, has the best time of all. He shoots with his left arm tucked behind his back, like he’s dueling in 17th century England. I’ve known Teddy for 10 years, since our skateboarding junior-high days, and I think this is the happiest I’ve ever seen him.
When we were growing up in Alaska, Teddy was one of the fastest runners in the state, and the Anchorage Daily News dubbed him “The Professor” for running races in his wire-rimmed glasses. He’s also a huge World War II buff. While I wheezed and struggled to keep up as we trained on icy back roads, Teddy would describe the differences between German and Russian tanks to me in a calm, measured voice.
Teddy would love the options at Las Vegas’ The Gun Store, especially the World War II Package. For $99.95, a historically inclined shooter can fire a Thompson machine gun, German MP-40 and German 9 mm handgun. For those more interested in current events, the $109.95 Coalition Package lets you shoot the same weapons used by our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan: an M-16 rifle, a Beretta 92 and the belt-fed M249 SAW. Both packages include targets, some ammunition and even a t-shirt.
After 1,000 rounds, we’re all done. Fred comes back downstairs and directs us in sweeping up the mess. Targets go in the trash, and we use long push brooms to mound the shells into piles. I walk back toward the sloped wall of rubber pellets that serves as the range’s backdrop and pick up a few bullets. Some are still in their copper jackets and still shaped like they were when they came out of the gun, but most are smashed and twisted into what looks like stepped-on Skittles.
“Once a year, we take all the lead out,” Fred says, “usually about 20,000 pounds of lead.” The range gets about a buck a pound selling the metal to a company that reloads it back into new ammunition.
Training Complete
We walk back upstairs, and Fred tells me I’m lucky I caught him during the slow season. A month earlier, and the range wouldn’t have been available for rent. Cold weather forces shooters inside, but the June warmth releases them.
Upstairs, Fred hands me the bill: $407. Geez, ammo’s expensive. I call out, “$40 each, guys,” and everybody hands over creased 20s. I toss in $45, bum two singles and spread the cash out in five stacks for Fred.
“Still have time to change your mind,” he says to Teddy.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea, now that the father-in-law is trained in firearms,” Jim says with a laugh.
— Josh Saul is a free-lance writer from New York.
For some shooters there is nothing quite like the feel of a 1911. It seems to be the quintessential pistol. And when you need a pistol, you need a good pistol. One you can bet your life on. The Global Response Pistol from Nighthawk Tactical is just such a pistol.
Even though this unit is the base model of the Nighthawk Tactical line, and as such carries the lowest price tag, it is still built with the same high-quality materials including a forges frame and slide and top-of-the-line internal components.
From the aggressively textured grips to the low-profile combat sights, this is one fine firearm. It is currently available in 9mm, 10mm, .40S&W and .45ACP.
For more information about this and other Nighthawk products check out www.nighthawktactical.com and get your hands on one of the finest 1911 pistols you'll ever own.
At the 2009 SHOT Show — held January 14-19 in Orlando, Florida — the most common topic of conversation was the strength of the AR-15 market. And strength is an understatement.
AR-15s, parts, accessories, magazines and even .223 and 5.56 NATO are selling at rates never before seen. Distributors are selling guns as fast as they can get them in the door.
Manufacturers of all of these products are taking so many orders the production backlogs are in some cases being measured in months. But for those with the foresight to have planned these are the best of times. It seems everyone wants an AR-15 and lots of people want two or more. Now is the time to buy. Supplies continue to dwindle and prices are sure to go up.
But what good is an AR-15 if you don't know how to use it, maintain it and outfit it properly? The Gun Digest Book of the AR-15 (Vols. 1 and 2) will answer that question. When you buy this two-book set — discounted at $42 for BOTH volumes (that's 25% OFF) — you'll have everything you need to know about the most popular gun in the world.
Author and gunsmith Patrick Sweeney turns the AR-15 inside out, showing you how every component works and teaching you how to make major and minor modifications to customize your rifle.
Read Dan Shideler's advice on collecting AR-15s Here
Take advantage of this special 2 AR-15 book offer — Volumes I & II of Gun Digest's Book of the AR-15 — for just $42 (25% Off!).
The Otis gun cleaning system is simply the best gun cleaning kit in the world. now Otis is offering something for the most popular calibers and weapons in the world. The 85211 tool set is designed to clean and maintain law enforcement pistols and sub guns 9MM through .45 caliber, .223 Cal./5.56MM & .308 Cal./7.62MM rifles. The Otis patch savers give you 360-degree coverage in your 12-gauge shotgun bores.
This weapons maintenance system provides you the necessary tools to completely break down and clean some of the most critical parts of your firearm. The Memory-Flex® cleaning rods, solid brass slotted tips, 100 percent cotton cleaning patches, bore brushes and the all-in-one cleaner, lubricant and preservative allow you to quickly clean the receiver, chamber, neck and bore.
Also with these components, you can easily strip the copper, carbon and other residue from in the barrel. The brass obstruction removers are used to knock out bore obstructions and stuck cases. The components from the brass scraper tool set are specifically designed to clean the hard to reach areas of your firearm. The brass scraper helps to clean carbon deposits from flat surfaces such as the bolt face and rails.
The handy picks are engineered to clean the locking lugs, while the pin punch can be used to remove pins from any firearm held together with a pin system. The end brush is used to remove carbon and to lubricate the slides. The male and female rod handles can attach to any of the brass scraper components to increase their length.
Everything is neatly packed in an 11-ounce pocket-sized soft pack case.
To get your hands on a this great Otis cleaning system check out www.otisgun.com.
Tru-Spec 24-7 Series pants will make you believe in the benefits of quality gear. I've been wearing a pair (in the regular clothing rotation) for several months now and have come up with only one complaint. That's pretty darned good.
The 24-7 series pants are built tough, yet comfortable, with solid seams, reinforced areas and pockets that, with one exception, are second to none. My only complaint with the pants is the hook-and-loop closure on the back pockets. It works so well, that sometimes it's tough to get stuff back into the pocket once you take it out. I would prefer a tough button closure on those back pockets. But if that's all I have to complain about I might just as well shut up.
The rest of the pockets on the Tru-Spec 24-7 pants are put together thoughtfully and designed with ease of use and maximum storage in mind. And the slider waist-band means you can bend and stretch without bulky elastic on the sides.
• Unique Pocket Design and Configuration Allows For A Completely Casual Appearance While Providing Secure Storage For All Of Your Duty Requirements
• Comfort Fit Slider Waistband Construction Which Eliminates The Need For Gathered Elastic Or Adjustable Side Tabs That Accommodates Either Paddle Style Or Inside-the-pants Holster
• Extra Deep Front Pockets
• Customized Tru-Spec Original Prym Snap
• 2-Knife/Accessory Pockets
• 2-Cargo Pockets With Hook & Loop Closure and Bellowed Side Gussets
• 2-Internal Magazine Compartments In Both Cargo Pockets
• Cell Phone/Magazine Pocket
• Engineered Dimensional Fit
• Double Reinforced Knee With Built In Knee Pad Pockets
To get your hands on a pair of Tru-Spec 24-7 pants, check out www.atlanco.com.
A Gun Digest Web Exclusive
Photos by Sharon Ahern
The old saying goes, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” But, many people judge guns that way. The practice probably got started with the Western movies of the 1930s and 1940s and television Westerns of the 1950s. The good guys very frequently had special guns, often nickel or silver plated with mother-of-pearl, ivory or stag (make much of that read “plastic”) grips. The bad guys had black guns with black grips. And, as we all know, very much of the time, the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats.
(Left) Ahern, wearing a Woolrich Tactical Elite Algerian Field Jacket, with the Century International Arms WASR Romanian AK-47.
It was the same with detective and cop stories. The good guys mostly carried revolvers and the bad guys frequently carried automatics. In the classic gangster pictures of the 1930s, bad guys used submachineguns more frequently than did the “G-Men.”
All this conditioned us to judging guns by their looks and imparting a guilt by association thing to a gun because of the way it looks. As human beings, of course, we’re constantly dealing with judging people by their looks – It's wrong but we all do it. As we become more and more enlightened, we’re finding ourselves better able to realize that looks mean very little and it’s character that counts. When it comes to guns, however, prejudice runs rampant, and especially among many of those who – rightfully – preach tolerance and understanding in other aspects of life. Many of those people are horribly bigoted when it comes to guns in general and, in specific, guns that can be used for self-defense, home defense and defense of the nation.
(Left) Danny Akers, Ahern’s son-in-law, an avid hunter and superior rifleman, with the “nice” looking Ruger Mini-14, Danny also wearing a Woolrich Algerian Field Jacket.
Assigning “good” and “bad” labels, en masse, to individuals or groups of individuals is among the penultimate examples of faulty logic; but, to label inanimate objects as intrinsically virtuous or evil is colossally stupid. With that stupidity in mind, it is easy to understand why many Democrats and some others in The United States Congress on September 13, 1994, passed “The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994,” more commonly known as “That Idiotic Clinton Administration Assault Weapons and Magazine Capacity Ban of 1994.” William Jefferson Clinton signed the legislation into law the same day it was passed. What a surprise, that!
(Right) Jerry Ahern, wearing a black leather jacket and black clothes, ready for something “no-good” with his all-black folding stock foreign rifle with its wickedly long looking magazine.
Right after the historic – some would say “catastrophic” – 2008 General Election, the Obama website posted some of Obama’s goals for his tenure in office, among these to restore the Assault Weapons Silliness and make it permanent. How Obama and his minions can say they respect the Second Amendment Rights of Americans and still want to attack lawful gun ownership can be explained easily – it’s called “Speaking Out of Both Sides of The Mouth..”
In 2007, actually, legislation was introduced to reinstate and expand the Assault Weapons Silliness, which had sunsetted on September 13, 2004 – as House Bill H.R. 1022 (which is only coincidentally and ironically the model designation of one of America’s finest .22 rifles), sponsored by Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D.N.Y.).
When queried about some technical specifications in the Assault Weapons Silliness, she revealed her lack of firearms knowledge by being unable to identify a “barrel shroud,” one of a list of features that, according to Congress, turned a pistol into an assault weapon. In fairness to Representative McCarthy, her husband was one of six people killed, her son one of 19 people injured on a commuter train when a man opened fire at random on unarmed passengers.
(Left) Danny and Jerry side by side, Mr.. “Sportsman” and Mr. “Sinister.”
Otherwise exhibiting an eclectic, non-stereotypical voting record, Representative McCarthy’s passion for firearms legislation is easily understood. She has suffered traumatic loss and likely knows nothing much about firearms. Blaming the instrument used by a killer, rather than blaming mindless laws which intentionally disarm the law-abiding, making them perfect victims for madmen who will find a weapon – no matter what – to fulfill their evil desires to take life, is not a position logically arrived at. Had any one or two of the victims been able to get to a weapon, the killer might have been brought down. Representative McCarthy actually switched political affiliations in order to run against an incumbent Republican, who wanted to repeal the ban. Emotions run deep when it comes to gun control efforts, and logic is almost always the first victim.
The principal pain caused by the Assault Weapons Silliness was the magazine capacity limitation. Classic guns, like Browning High Powers, all the so-called “Wonder-Nines” and their .40 S&W counterparts, AR-15s and any other firearm that had a magazine capacity greater than 10 rounds had to be sold with a magazine modified to hold no more than 10 rounds. This was, of course, stupid, since most gunfights don’t involve anywhere close to 10 rounds fired by one participant. As a result, “Hi-Cap” magazines, as they came to be called, were like gold coins; weapons which were basically trashed by the new law – like the HK-91, for example – shot up in value and soon became as scarce as logical thinking at the Democratic Convention.
(Right) Mandatory long gun shot leaning against picturesque tree.
For a decade, these awful conditions persisted. 2004 saw the sunset provision of the 1994 law kick in and normal magazines were once again available. I remember seeing AK-47 30- round magazines selling for $10 each. I could, at last, get the proper magazines for my SIG 229s. Reason reigned once again!
With Obama and Biden coming into power with a strongly Democratic Congress to back them up, the question of attacks on the civil liberties of firearms owners is, once again, at issue. There are no “good” guns or “bad” guns, and magazine capacity has no bearing on how a firearm will be used. Indeed, FBI statistics consistently point out that the most commonly used firearm in crime is not an assault weapon at all, nor a high-capacity semi-automatic pistol. It is a short-barreled revolver! Should we ban short-barreled revolvers, then? Of course not! That would be crazy.
What got me thinking about this article was that I recently acquired a Century International Arms semi-auto AK-47. A gently used Romanian firearm fitted with a U.S.-made Tapco folding stock, it is all black (except where some finish is worn off) and has a long, 30-round magazine that could look very menacing to someone who didn’t know any better. AK-47s are used by terrorists and revolutionaries, of course, but they’re also used by lots of good guys, including some of our own troops operating in the Middle East – they’ve been found to be sometimes better in house-to-house operations than the M-4, throwing a more powerful round out of a conveniently short platform. Lots of Americans here at home keep AK-47s for home defense or survival use.
(Left) Flat shot with Ruger Mini-14 and Century International Arms WASR AK-47.
On the other side of the “looks” issue, I own a currently still-stock Ruger Mini-14. The metal is a dull stainless steel. The stock isn’t black, nor does it fold. It’s a very pretty piece of hardwood, in a warm, beckoning brown color, not too dissimilar to the color of our beloved family member, Honey The Wonder Dog. Although larger capacity magazines are available, my Mini-14 is currently sporting a five-round magazine. Its five-round magazine seats flush in the receiver, doesn’t hang down “menacingly” at all.
The Ruger Mini-14 is a sporting rifle, the product of an American company, patterned after an American military rifle – the M-14 — which was used against the evil Commies. The AK-47 was designed by a Communist – Mikhail Kalashnikov, who turned 89 on November 10, 2008 and happens to be one of the world’s greatest living arms designers – and shows up under questionable circumstances on the evening news.
The AK-47 magazine in Ahern’s right hand, the Ruger magazine in Ahern’s left.
The color of the gun – just like the color of someone’s skin – makes no difference, except perhaps when it comes to rust-resistance. It’s what’s underneath the color that counts, whether guns or people. Both the AK and the Ruger are fine firearms. The color of the stock, and whether or not it folds or is rigid, is merely a matter of preference and convenience. Years ago, I owned a Mini-14 with a factory folding stock. A thirty-round magazine can be seriously detrimental when someone is trying to stay low and shoot at the same time. The Ruger’s flush seated five-rounder is ideal for firing from a prone position. The AK-47 fires the 7.62x39mm Russian; but, the Ruger Mini-14 can be had as the Ruger Mini Thirty, which is also chambered in that Russian caliber — as opposed to the nice American .223 Remington caliber, which is, of course, the civilian version of the original 5.56X45mm NATO (you shouldn’t fire current higher chamber pressure NATO standard ammo in weapons chambered for the lower chamber pressure .223 Remington).
“Beauty,” we are told, “is in the eye of the beholder.” So is ugliness. The anti-gun forces who wish to disarm America for a wide range of reasons, ranging from naiveté to the sincere and misguided to the horribly insidious, will always see our guns as ugly and evil. Support the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation. Support, work for and donate to pro-gun candidates and causes. Fight prejudice.
Where to find them:
Century International Arms
236 Bryce Boulevard
Fairfax, VT 05450
800-270-2767
www.centuryarms.com
Sturm-Ruger
1 lacey Place
Southport, CT 06890
203-259-7843
www.ruger.com
Good glasses are a must for any shooter and Wiley X makes some of the best.
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Made by a company known for advanced vision protection used by combat troops, special warfare operators and law enforcement agencies worldwide, these glasses far exceed ANSI Z87.1 and ANSI Z80.3 safety and optical standards.
The Wiley X Reign’s lightweight, rugged and durable frame is matched with the company’s proprietary High Velocity Protection (HVP) Selenite™ polycarbonate lenses for serious protection and distortion-free vision under the most challenging conditions. Whatever Mother Nature dishes out — harsh sunlight, reflected glare, blowing dust, flying bugs, you name it — these rugged glasses reduce eyestrain while providing optimum protection, so you can always perform your best.
The attractive wrap-around frame is designed to provide full coverage and clear peripheral vision, while protecting eyes from harmful UVA/UVB rays and distracting glare. Wiley X offers the new Reign in a choice of frame/lens combinations including gloss black frames with polarized silver flash lenses and matte black frames with smoke lenses, ensuring just the right look and just the right performance for every outdoor sports enthusiast.
In the Street Series tradition, the Wiley X Reign combines serious protection and optical performance with a highly developed sense of fashion. These stylish glasses can go from the pistol range to the patrol car to the without missing a beat — making them the perfect choice for anyone with an active lifestyle.
If you want to get your hands on a pair of the new Wiley X Reign glasses, check them out online: www.wileyx.com.
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