Author Archives: Commander Zero

Article – Armed for survival: How Oct 7 Hamas massacre transformed gun culture in Israel

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Interesting piece about the change in ‘gun culture’ in Israel.

For decades, firearm ownership in Israel was uncommon. Although military service ensured that many Israelis were trained with weapons, personal firearms were seen as more of a liability than a necessity. The strict licensing process deterred many, and Israelis trusted the state and its defense forces to protect them from terror threats, which took precedence over Israel’s low crime rates.

First, welcome to the party.

This article is interesting because, while you and I might support the idea of the more people discreetly arming themselves against unforeseen violence, there’s a cultural difference clearly in evidence here that is worth noting.

Gozlan is unnerved by what he sees as inadequate oversight in the licensing process. “At the range, I saw people who had never held a gun in their life, barely hitting their targets. It’s frightening to think these people are now walking around with firearms.”

Catch that “inadequate oversight in the licensing process”? The article continues with concerns that, while no one is saying that the citizens shouldn’t be able to have guns, the possibility that they are ‘untrained’ or lacking in skill poses a, to them, legitimate concern.

This almost feels like a setup for a testing scheme. In this country, broadly speaking, if where you live requires a license you’re application is mostly theoretical…few places require you to go to the range and shoot a particular score to qualify. Some do, yes, but most do not. A right, predicated on a test, is not a right. And that’s the crux of what I’m getting at.

‘Reaonable” and ‘common sense’ regulations that support this sort of testing are backdoor schemes to restrict access and ownership. Let’s say a municipality or state wants to restrict firearms ownership and access. First thing you do is create a licensing scheme with requirements. Now, make it impossible to meet those requirements. For example, you may need eight hours of classroom time with a qualified instructor….and then you make the classrooms unavailable, set the qualifications for instructor to be unobtainable, and you have, by default, created a roadblock even though on paper you have a clearly instructed process to follow.

You can add all sorts of roadblocks…the licensing office is only open on every other Thursday for two hours, you have to apply in person, you need to bring documents that are awkward or difficult to obtain, funding reductions reduce staff available for processing forms, etc, etc. This isn’t just theory….in places like California and New York it’s business as usual.

I bring this up because people will read the article above and nod their heads sagely that, yes, everyone should have the right to own a gun but…there needs to be training an competency standards. And those standards, naturally, are set by people who have a keen interest in people not owning guns.

So, before anyone asks how you could possibly be against a “safety measure” like competency and handling exams, remember that these mechanisms are easily jiggered to promote making ownership of guns so onerous as to be impossible.

Should you have competency and skill in handling your boomtoys? Absolutely. You should regularly practice for safety and accuracy. Should it be a requirement administered by .gov, under .gov guidelines and rules, as a condition of ownership? Absolutely not.

Hopefully the Israelis will not fall for that trick.

Ruger RXM

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The Ruger RXM I ordered last week arrived on Christmas Eve…like some sort of anti-Hallmark Christmas moment.

First impressions are that, other than lacking finger groves, this thing is about as Glock as you can get without an IP lawsuit. First thing I did was swap out barrels, slides, etc, off of my genuine Glock Gen3 guns and everything fit just fine.

Other than the removable fire control unit (FCU) this thing is a G19 that had a few tiny mods. The texturing is very nice…aggressive enough without feeling like youre grabbing sandpaper. The lack of finger grooves on the grip is really a personal pref thing…I don’t care either way, although I kinda prefer the grooves but don’t care if theyre not present. The magazine release seems a little more pronounced making for more economic motions when releasing the mag. Slide release was about as Glock as you could get. Sights, from the the factory, are metal, tall, and with a tritium front and serrated back…thats a big upgrade over what your basic Glock comes with. The slide is serrated fore and aft, which I like. The frame is a blue-grey color that, in my opinion, seems a bit weird…it addresses no need except perhaps to help Magpul use up all the Grey #2209 polymer pellets. The trigger….uhhhh….it’s the oddest trigger I’ve ever felt on a semiauto pistol. It feels like a long double-action on a tuned revolver. It seems to stack all the way to the break with the last bit of travel very reminiscent, to me, of a DA revolver. The only complaint that I can see immediately about this gun will be the trigger. For guys who shoot a lot, you can make it work…but you’ll be conscious and deliberate about your pull and followthrough in a way i don’t think you would with a regular Glock trigger. The slide is cut for an optic and, from what I’ve read, the Ruger is better than the Glock in terms of ability to mount an optic. Can’t speak to that since I havent tried it yet.

Does it fit Glock holsters? Fit all of mine, including leather ones, just fine. And of course it takes Glock mags.

So, lets say that it is, for the sake of argument, in all respects a Glock 19. What, if any, is the advantage to getting one over a G19 from a survivalists point of view? Well, let’s look at a few things starting with price.

To keep this an apples-vs-apples discussion I’m going to use my dealer pricing since that’ll  be pretty close to what most dealers will buy them at. Final retail prices can vary wildly depending on region and market. The Gen3 Glock is not available with an optics cut, so right off the bat, if you’re a red dot guy you are getting an advantage with the Ruger. My dealer shows a Gen3 G19 at $440 and the RMX at $340.

  • Ruger: Optics cut – Glock: No optic cut
  • Ruger: One Pmag – Glock: Two Glock factory mags
  • Ruger: Metal night sight – Glock: Three dot plastic sight

From a cost perspective, you get one extra mag with the Glock (a $20 value) for your $100. With the Ruger, you’re short one mag, but you gain an optic cut and a night sight made of metal for $100 less.

So why would someone choose the Ruger over the Glock. I think the answer to that is going to boil back down to the removable FCU.

Like the Sig 320, the shotgun-shell-sized metal FCU is the serial numbered part…its the ‘firearm’. This means that all the other parts…the barrel. slide, and frame, are completely unregulated. This means you can order those parts through the mail straight to your shipping address. Why is this significant?

Let’s say that, being a smart survivalist, you know that one size does not fit all. You like the Gen3 Glock platform for its reliability but you want your gun to have different sights..maybe even a red dot. And you’d like a more tactical color. And you might want a G17 size frame but with a G19 sized slide. Or you may want competition sights. Or a threaded barrel. To get all that on a G19 you would have to send your slide out for milling a red dot cut, throw away the plastic sights and replace with the sights you want, etc, etc.

Or, you buy an RXM FCU and then start shopping third-party. You order a stripped slide, your sights, a threaded barrel, a frame in the size and color you want, and you slap it all together. On the one hand, you now have your semi-bespoke RMX and no leftover parts, and on the other hand you have your semi-bespoke G19 with a few extra parts that you paid for and didnt use, and a bill for slide machining.

That modularity is about the only real advantage I see at this point.I am hoping that Ruger will bring out a full-size G17 version of the RXM soon, as well as MagPul offering up some different colors.

If you already have a rack full of G19’s or G17’s, is there a reason to get this gun? Probably not unless you want the satisfaction of just buying an FCU and ‘building’ exactly what you want from the ground up. If you don’t have any Glocks but have wanted to get into them, this might be a better choice. The price difference between the two is not insignificant.

What about mixing them both into your logistics? For the most part, it probably wont hurt anything. The FCU and a couple of its related parts are obviously proprietary to Ruger, but just about everything else is interchangeable with the Glock, so if you have a shoebox full of Glock spare parts you’re probably going to be well supplied for the RXM as well.

I think that for the survivalist, the biggest attraction of this gun will be the ability to just buy an FCU and then customize it from the ground up to be exactly what you want. This is a feature that is not unique to the Ruger (see the Sig P320) but the advantage to the Ruger is that once you put together your ideal gun you can then support it with dirt-common Glock parts. Also, I suspect the third-party market is already gearing up quickly for things like Flux Raider chasis, different color frames, different size frames, etc, etc.

When Ruger finally does make the FCU available by itself, I’ll probably get one just to play around in the aftermarket parts arena and put together something that fit my ideals.

Of course, all bets are off if I take this thing to the range and it doesn’t shoot well…but so far, I like what I see.

 

Chrismahanukwanzakah….and Festivus!

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It’s that time of year when all the gift-giving holidays occur. Hanukah, Christmas, Festivus, Kwanza (although I really have my doubts this thing has legs), Festivus (which I bet has more observants than Kwanza), Boxing Day for the limeys and their fellow travelers, and a couple others that I’m forgetting.

Regardless, whatever holiday occurs this month that matters to you…have a happy one of it. Thank you to all who sent cards or gifts these last couple weeks…its always fun to find something in the mailbox.

Me, I’m going out to dinner with some cow orkers this evening, and then I plan on sleeping late tomorrow and getting in some range time.

Next week will have the obligatory end of year post, which I am working on now. 2025 is absolutely guaranteed to be more interesting than 2024. Should be highly entertaining. Say what you will about the apocalypse, its guaranteed not to be boring.

Movie – Homestead

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Ok, first, to set the mood in regards to expectations, let me throw the trailer up here:

A couple things to note that are going to give you an idea of how this movie is going to shake out a) the studio that brought this to the screen is an outfit that specializes in religious-themed offerings, and b) Neal McDonough, the only ‘big name’ in this movie, is a very devout Catholic…devout enough to the point that he doesn’t do sex scenes or kiss people in movies. So, with those two bits of data, lets get into it.

The premise is absolutely nothing you haven’t seen in a hundred movies in this genre. The very short version is that Bad Event happens but theres a rich guy who has been preparing for it and needs a buncha ex-operators to keep the place safe from the unprepared and desperate survivors. Drama ensues.

Although the classic genre bad guys – the cannibal bikers – are absent, we do have a few tropes that are standard for the genre:

  • The security guy who wants to take it all over for himself
  • The government bureaucrat who wants to seize everything for redistribution
  • The we-have-to-help-everyone character oblivious to the risks
  • The person who thinks everything will be fine..the government will help us
  • The family that gets split up and has no idea where the others are

Into this mix, there’s a couple of subplots that are, presumably, addressed in subsequent episodes (yup, this thing apparently is available as a series)…there’s the two teenagers from different backgrounds who have a chaste budding romance, a kid who may or may not be prescient, other ‘survivalists’ with a camp nearby, and a couple other little subplots that aren’t explored at this point in the movie/series.

I starts out fairly strong. Typical ‘evacuate the city’ scene with traffic, cars out of gas, fist fights at supermarkets, casual violence, etc. Once people arrive at the fortified hillside compound we start in with the scenes that, again, we’ve seen in every movie in this genre: people demanding to be let in, rationing, people in charge butting heads, et, etc.

And, of course, there’s the religious messaging. Now, in some ways it makes sense – its the end of the world, some people are going to be more devout than others and it’s not unreasonable to think that theyre going to say that everyone needs to turn to faith to see them through things. Thats not unrealistic. However the last ten minutes of the movie is where it really drives it home. I’m gonna be a nice guy and give you a spoiler cut. Eject now if you don’t want spoilage.

Continue reading →

Christmahanukwanzakah

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I received a couple cards and gifts in the mail from readers last week. I’d like to thank everyone who sent ( or is sending) holiday greetings/gifts. Gift-giving is always cool, but I’d rather you use your resources to enhance your own resilience rather than sending some cool geegaw to some faceless dude you read about on the internet.

However…if you’ve already got the whole resilience angle all taken care of, well, by all means, send the Zero some love.

But…cards or not, gifts or not, I still think youre all awesome.

ETA: Some trivia – For the shot where Hans Gruber falls from the top of the building, Alan Rickman was really dropped 40-feet onto an airbag with a blue-screen cover; the background was later edited in. A stuntman held Rickman up with a rope. Mirroring Rickman’s line repeated twice in the movie, the stunt crew was to count to 3 before releasing, but to get a genuine reaction from Rickman, the stunt man released the rope on the count of two, not three. Rickman later said during a Q&A that the stunt was purposely done on his last day on set.

Bag O’ Tricks – Batteries edition

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There’s nothing that says you have to have battery-powered devices to help you get through the unexpected crisis, but they sure do make things easier.

When it comes to electronics, there’s a handful of things I keep in the Bag O’ Tricks ™ at all times…flashlights (plural), radio, USB charger, scanner. All of these devices run on batteries and if a crisis occurs, you are definitely going to want to have a spare reload (or three) for your devices.

You do what works for you, but here’s where I’ve landed after much thought and twenty years of practice.

First step is battery compatibility – its the BoT(tm), not a CostCo. I don’t have the room or the back muscles to carry several different battery types. I have zero interest in carrying around a handful AA batteries, 9v batteries, CR123 batteries, AAA batteries, and a couple coin batteries. Try to get all your gear singing from the same battery songbook. This is where your first value judgement, and possibly compromise, is going to have to take place. Let’s say your radios take AA but your flashlight takes CR123. You’ve got three choices at this point:

  • Swap out the flashlight for one that takes AA
  • Swap out the radio for one that takes CR123
  • Carry two different types of batteries

It is entirely possible that, given three ‘Tier One’ pieces of gear, one of them might have to be swapped out for second tier in order to provide battery compatibility. How much are you willing to ‘step down’ in terms of utility in exchange for those streamlined logistics? Fortunately, almost everything has a functional, reliable, usable, quality alternative. Maybe you’re ‘perfect’ flashlight runs on CR123 but you need one that runs on AA…but you hate giving up all the awesome features of that particular CR123 flashlight. Well, look around, there is almost certainly an equivalent one out there that runs on AA.

And, just to be clear, I’m not advocating one type of battery over another. I’m just saying whatever battery you choose, try to stick with all your devices running off that one.

For my BoT(tm), I try to keep stuff as small as possible. Most small devices run on AA (or AAA) batteries and thats what I’ve decided to standardize on for my Bag O’ Tricks(tm). That doesnt mean my other gear doesn’t use other batteries…it just means that everything in my bag, which may be all I have in terms of resupply for the immediate time being, runs off the same battery – AA.

The battery devices I keep in my bag are pretty straightforward: AM/FM pocket radio with earphones, Icom R6 scanner (uses same headphones as AM/FM radio), a couple flashlights, and a USB charger.

The only exception to the ‘one battery’ rule is that sometimes I’ll have a rechargeable device (cell phone, flashlight) that can be recharged through USB. For those, I have a USB charger in my bag that runs off of…you guessed it…AA batteries.

I carry 16 AA batteries in a pair of Maxpedition battery pouches. There are other battery cases on Amazon and you’ll find no shortage of variations on this theme. I came into the Maxpedition ones years ago and never bothered looking for others. The plastic case is available from plenty of other makers, but the cordura pouch from Maxpedition does a nice job of keeping things handy and muffling any rattle. The most important thing is to get a case or carrier that completely isolates the battery from everything else around it and protects the contacts.

Don’t just think you can wrap your batteries with some tape over the contacts, throw them in your bag, and be fine. Bad juju, man. Same for sticking them in a cigar tube, or a cut length of PVC with duct tape over the ends. Your electronics (radio, light, gps, phone, etc.) are all critical pieces of gear. Don’t half-ass it by throwing your batteries in a bag where theyre going to short circuit against each other and be useless to you when you finally need them…assuming they don’t set your bag on fire first.

As for batteries themselves, we all know that at some point the batteries crap the bed and turn your gear into junk. I go with lithium AA batts. They are way more expensive than regular AA’s but a) they leak far far less than regular AA’s, and b) they don’t weaken over time or in temperature extremes the way regular AA’s do. Yup, theyre more expensive…but when I’m navigating my way out of the basement of a building during a blackout I will absolutely not care that they cost several times what the regular batteries cost…I’ll just be relieved they work and didnt puke in my flashlight.

And, by the way, when it comes to flashlights is there any reason not to have them use LED’s? They sip battery power and are far less delicate than the old krypton bulb lights. All my flashlights, except for legacy stuff, are LED these days. And for situations where you want to use batteries sparingly they are absolutely the better choice.

And although it isnt technically a battery, I always carry a USB plug in and one of those octopus-like multi-adaptor USB charging cables. This way, if there’s electricity, I can charge whatever USB device I or someone with me has. This really shines when traveling and need to charge up my phone at the airport so I can screw around on the internet while awaiting my flight.

I like to think that any crisis I get into where I have to rely on what’s in my BoT(tm) will be a short term one and that I’ll be back at my base of operations shortly. But life has a way of throwing curveballs and if I’m stuck living out of my bag, so to speak, for a couple days I have no doubt there will be at least one or two battery changes for some of my gear…so, I carry two 8-packs of AA lithium batteries.

There you go. A glance into the reasoning about whats in the BoT(tm) and why.

 

Ruger RXM

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Ruger has developed a bit of a reputation for ‘borrowing’ other gun makers designs and running with them. Usually they tweak it enough that its not a straight up clone. That level of discretion has apparently left the building. I’m guessing they call it the RXMbecause calling it the G19 was too obvious.

A collaboration between Magpul and Ruger, they’ve basically taken the ‘modular’ idea of the swappable fire-control unit from SIG and stuffed it into a not-a-Glock-19. Cleverly, Ruger seems to be letting the polymer masters at Magpul handle the frames while Ruger handles the metal bits. Makes sense.

I have a SIG 320 with the swappable FCU and it’s an interesting concept…buy the serial-numbered FCU and then you can change out your frame,slide,barrel, etc, with unregulated parts…much like how a stripped AR lower opens up a huge avenue of ‘customization’. If you live in a place where there’s a limit on how many guns you can own, this is a nice workaround to having a full-size, a compact, a ‘race gun’, etc. all with only one ‘firearm’.

So you have huge customization with the FCU concept, takes Glock mags, have early third-party support from Magpul (who are making the frames, it seems), optic cuts, steel sights, etc. And I’m seeing them at $400~ or less, dealer cost.  Assuming Ruger doesn’t do it’s usual new-product-recall, they might have finally created the polymer striker gun they’ve been trying and failing at for years.

Is there a reason to get this rather than the SIG 320? Glock magazine ubiquity might suggest so. Is there a reason to get this rather than the Glock? SIG-style FCU modularity seems like a big sell. And Magpul will be offering this in all sortsa colors, I’m sure.

This might actually turn Rugers amazing always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride history of LE contracts on its head. I need to get one of these to play with.

ETA: Also, mad props for not incorporating an interchangeable backstrap system. At least, not yet… I suppose aftermarket frames might incorporate them, but I find them to be almost useless. Also, my vendor shows dealer price at $340 which seems reasonable.