Took the FN TAC3 out for a spin yesterday. I had held off on going to the range with it because I was waiting for the optic to arrive. And…it arrived yesterday.

Its an Eotech XPS2. I had been looking at various ‘dot scopes’ and wanted to give the Eotech a try. They have a reputation for durability, and I’m looking for end-of-the-world resilience. I have a dot on my MP5A2 clone, a Sig Romeo XT Pro and I like it a lot…strong recommend. I’m rapidly becoming a fan of these types of optics, but I am making sure not to like them at the expense of my iron sights. Even as durable as these things are purported to be, with battery life measured in years, I still make sure every gun has a set of sighted-in iron sights. Because.

Anyway…. Took it to the range, sighted in, and started shooting the steel plates. The FN has a military trigger but it’s got a smooth travel and good break. Actually a very nice trigger. Accuracy was also quite good, even with the 1x of the optic. I might have to get a magnifier just because. I only put about sixty rounds through it since it was getting late and I was doing this right after work…and darkness is coming earlier.

Overall, I really like this AR. I need to really sit down with it, solidly rest it, and see what it can do but so far I’m really pleased. I’ll be swapping the muzzle device for something conducive to a suppressor, drop a light on it, and that’ll be that. I really look forward to shooting this thing some more.

Do I like it better than my Colt? Well…yes, but thats because the Colt is in ‘classic’ M4 attire with front sight tower and round handguards. A capable and good rig, no doubt…but it doesn’t lend itself as easily to what I’m wanting to do. But…still a nice gun.

Figured it was just a matter of time.

The 10mm Auto Ruger LC Carbine

Good caliber, good idea, bad platform.

Well, at least they tried. I expect this and the .45 version to be discontinued within the next five years. By then Ruger will have developed the PC Carbine II which will be  a larger frame. Ruger will drop the original 9/40 PC Carbines and make all the new ones on the one-size-fits-all frame that supports 9/40 and 10/45.

Someday.

Do you know what my favorite 9mm? It’s the HiPower. But I carry a Glock, and stockpile Glock handguns. Is the Glock my favorite? Nope, not even close. So, you might ask, why would I commit to the Glock platform when my favorite is the HiPower? Well, because what gun is my favorite has absolutely nothing to with what I think is the best gun for the ugly future.

I have a nice 6″ K-22 Smith and Wesson that is a lovely handgun. It is well made, accurate, and pleasant to shoot. It’s a classic in every sense of the word. BUT…in Mad Max world its got some drawbacks…it’s blued finish will wear and the exposed metal will suffer, some parts are a bit delicate for the apocalyptic lifestyle, the capacity of six rounds is a bit limiting, and the sights don’t give you many options. But, merciful Crom, it’s a fine, fine handgun.

So when it’s time to stow a .22 pistol in the backpack for that frantic evacuation to the beta site will the K-22 make the cut. Not if I’ve only got room for one. I’ll probably go with todays acquisition:

Stainless, replaceable front sight, built like a tank, and holds ten rounds….a 66% increase over the K-22. Is it as pretty? Does it handle as nicely in the hand? Nope. But I can drop it in the snow and mud, rinse it off in a creek, and be good to go. Technically, I could do that with the K22 but I’d fell pretty bad about it…its a nice pistol.

I’d been wanting a durable .22 revolver for field use for a while. Although I have a couple .22 Ruger autos, I still like the revolver for its utility…CB’s, shorts, longs, shot, etc….the revolver will shoot it all. Ten rounds puts it on the same level as the Mk IV in terms of capacity, and I don’t have to worry about magazines. On the other hand, when something goes wrong on a revolver youre pretty much stuck going to a gunsmith, whereas when something goes wrong on an auto its usually just a matter of swapping parts.

I’ll take this thing out this weekend and play with it. I rather enjoy shooting .22’s because I can actually shoot off a couple hundred rounds and not break the bank like I would with .223 or 9mm.

As for the utility of this thing….I doubt anyone could really swing a convincing argument that it’s not got a place in a survivalists armory. Plinking, pest control, small game hunting, sentry removal, etc….kind of a multitakser.

When Ruger came out with their new PC  takedown carbines in 9mm and .40 there was a clamor for one in .45 AARP.  Seems a reasonable dream…after all, there are still plenty of Luddites out there who wish they had a .45 carbine to go with their 1911’s. (There was, naturally, an equally clamorous din calling for a 10mm.)

The problem, it seems, is that the envelope of Ruger’s PC carbine in 9/40 can’t really accommodate the .45. But Ruger did have a platform that could – their LC carbine that was being sold in 5.7×28. By using the LC platform Ruger could do the whole rigamorole of M-lok, folding stock, pic rails, threaded barrels, and every other tacticool feature that was missing from the original Camp Carbine.

Since Ruger bought Marlin you could make an argument that this thing is the Marlin Camp Carbine 2.0. Obviously it isn’t…it’s a completely different style of gun although both are simply just blowback .45 cabines.

One huge evolutionary change was dispensing with 1911 magazine compatibility and going to Glock magazines. No doubt this absolutely enraged the 1911 devotees but if eight rounds of .45 is good then 13 must be gooder. One nice feature of the 9/40 PC Carbines was their interchangeable magazine wells. If Ruger had made this .45 carbine with an option to swap out the magazine well for one that could handle 1911 mags they really would have made a bunch of people happy.

Since Ruger owns Marlin I’m sure someone will ask why they just didn’t reintroduce the Camp Carbine. Well, I’m guessing that after thirty years the tooling and equipment was either long gone or not usable. And the Camp Carbine was not without its flaws…most notably a reputation for beating it’s stocks to death. Additionally, Ruger already had a product in the manufacturing pipeline with the LC carbine. Changing the barrel and a few other parts to make it in .45 was, no doubt, more economically viable.

So..I ordered one up. Mostly because I have several police trade-in glock 21s here and I’ve always liked the pistol/carbine combinations. I also have a .45 suppressor here and it seemed like a fun idea. 

I had high hopes for this gun because I actually really liked the camp carbines. This gun is…okay.

The Ruger stock is atrocious. After a few rounds it flexed and wobbled like the folder on an underfolder AK. Don’t even try to make it work…just throw it away. The back of the receiver is pic rail so you have all sorts of folder options. What kind? Glad you asked. Lets look at…stock options:

First up is a JMAC stock I pulled off my other JAKL. A simple no-frills stock, it has a couple QD sockets and is rock solid. All of these stocks, actually, were quite an improvement over the factory stock. This style gives the right hand thumb plenty of access to the safety and slide lock.

Next up is an AR-180-style stock. These were discontinued but were previously available from Midwest Industries and Brownells. When folded, the contour of the stock matches the contour of the right hand thumb as it grips the pistol grip. Surprisingly ergonomic. This stock is the most comfortable of the three and is still rock solid.

This is a triangle folder, also from JMAC, that I have come to regard as my ‘universal’ stock. This goes on the back of my JAKL, PC Charger, 10/22 Charger, etc. If youre gonna swap stocks between guns, this one goes with everything.

Although you can, in theory, fire the gun with the stock folded, it makes getting a grip around the left side of the pistol  grip difficult.

The safety flips in the right direction at least…down to fire. I am hoping an extended safety is soon available because the factory one is a bit awkward.

Ruger knockoffs of Magpul BUIS were provided but they seemed crowded and too small for a nice fast sight picture. In fact, while Magpul BUIS usually have a large peep and then a flip smaller peep, these sights just have a tiny peep which seems counter-intuitive considering the close-range nature of a .45 ACP carbine. Most people would, I think, agree that a carbine like this is a short range sort of thing so optics might be overkill. I think a set of peeps with a big aperture and post would be a winner.

How’d it shoot? Very well, actually. Accuracy was good although the sights were a bit coarse. The recoil was a bit harsh… straight blowback doesn’t do shootabilty any favors. No hiccups with 230 FMJ. I didn’t have any lighter bullets or hollowpoints to test on this trip, but that’ll be coming up.

Also, this is not a takedown gun…which was one of the major attractions of the Ruger 9/40. I suppose its possible that Ruger will make a takedown version but only time will tell.

Much like the original Camp Carbines there is the question of What Is This Thing Good For? It’s not really powerful enough for hunting*, it’s not accurate enough for varmint shooting, and the ammo is too expensive for plinking….so what is it for?

For me, it’s greatest utility is for a ‘package’ of guns/ammo for stashing somewhere. If I were stashing a pistol-n-carbine combo somewhere I would want as compact a package as possible. While I could stash a Glock and an M4, I would also have to stash two different types of ammo, two different types of magazines, two different types of mag pouches, etc, etc. I absolutely recognize the superiority of a rifle cartridge over a pistol cartridge, but I also recognize that sometimes space and logistics are at a premium. For example, while the 9mm is way underpowered compared to the .223, a takedown Ruger 9mm carbine and a 9mm Glock, with happysticks, fits into a laptop case.

Aesop had low hopes for Ruger’s .45 Carbine and he’s probably getting about 500 words ready to sum up what could be summed up in three words: Told Ya So.

Ruger’s PC Carbine in 9/40 is, in my opinion, a superior platform. The distinct magazine well with interchangeable inserts, the takedown feature, solid barrel mounted peep sights, etc, all make the 9mm or .40 carbine a better choice than this, in my opinion. However, if you are married to the .45 ACP this gun is an addition to the rather limited offerings that are out there.

TL;DR: if you absolutely have to have a .45 PCC this might scratch your itch but it couuld have been done better. If youre someone who isn’t so caliber dogmatic as the Cooper tribe, get the 9mm or .40 caliber version of the PC carbine instead and enjoy the superior features and ergonomics.

 * = Yes, I know you can kill a deer with a .45 ACP. You can also kill a deer with a baseball bat. That doesn’t mean its a good idea.

I had to take a few guns to the range this weekend to function test them or sight them in before cleaning them and tucking them away. I had to test fire the Beretta 92, another PSA JAKL I picked up, and, most interestingly, the Sig P320.

The SIG P320 was a delight to shoot. The particular model I was shooting had a polymer frame but had tungsten weights installed in the grip area to give it some weight and heft. And, interestingly, it really did make a different. The pistol was quite accurate and very pleasant to shoot. But, then again, how often do you hear anything bad about SIG stuff? (Except for the usual charge levied against any made-by-blue-eyed-blond-haired-people firearm – price)

The Berttas shot just fine, so they’ll get cleaned up and tucked away. I need to play with the JAKL a bit more. But that SIG….well, I did what I needed to do but now I just want to shoot it some more for fun. Its a very nice gun.

I also need to load up some more .338 Lapua ammo and take the Ruger out for some more work. I fired 40 rounds through it last month to get the gun sighted in and, using bog-common components, it held about 1MOA. But I want better and need to source some Gold Medal Match Magnum primers. I shot 225 gr. hunting bullets which is fine, but I have some 250 gr. Horndy SST bullets sitting here and I expect better results with them.

I suppose at some point I should go play with my hunting PTR to make sure everything is just the way it needs to be. I’d like to go hunting more than a handful of times thus year, but work schedule always seems to have something to say about that.

I have a Springfield Armory 1911 (my only 1911, in fact) that I bought used many years ago….I’m talking back in the late 80’s or very early 90’s. It has a Baughman ramp front, target rear, full length recoil guide, extended beavertail, adjustable trigger, and at least another half dozen modifications. The previous owner had all this work done because when SA made this thing you couldn’t buy the gun with all those options. Back when this gun was born your only real choices were if you wanted a parkerized or blued copy of a GI 1911. Maybe there were one or two options available like different sights but that was about it. If you wanted all those other bells and whistles…well…you had a trip to the gunsmith in front of you.

Nowadays you can just pull a SKU out of SA’s catalog and get a pistol with even more and better options right off the shelf.

I mention this because I was re-reading an old blog post of Tam’s about the cost of custom guns. The things that she put into a custom .300 Blackout rifle are things that are, to a degree, now available ‘off the rack’ from several different makers. Notably, my Ruger .300 Blackout comes with a threaded barrel, an adjustable trigger, can take detachable magazines, has a good stock, a solid attachment point for optics, optics-ready bolt handle, and a few other features that, for the time period she as doing this in, were ‘custom’.( Her .300, though, is much prettier than my .300 . I wonder if she still has it.)

But what those two guns have in common is that the features we wanted, insisted on actually, eventually wound up becoming ‘standard features’. Other good examples would be pistols from the factory now coming with optic cuts already done. The sudden craze of every rifle barrel from a manufacturer being threaded. Adjustable triggers on everything. It goes on and on.

It used to be that a bespoke boomtoy was so personal and unique an item that it was practically a persons ‘signature’. Elmer Keith’s No. 5, Patton’s Ivory handled SAA, Diaz’ Winchesters, etc. And now, someone somewhere is making exact copies or at least guns that have all those features. Even my BBQ gun isn;t really unique since its a cataloged item with machine engraving…rare, yes. Custom? Absolutely not.

I have one bespoke gun and it’s story is very similar to Tam’s – I bought a bunch of clapped out Mausers from Sarco back in the late 80’s, threw away the stocks and barrels, and cleaned up the actions. I bought a brand new 29″ stepped military barrel in 7×57, put it in, added some Williams receiver sights, blued the whole mess, dropped it into an old commercial Mauser stock of ancient vintage, and made an ugly rifle that I thought was perfect. It doesn’t win any beauty contests but I love shooting it.

I’m not sure you can call anything made of drop-in parts custom, but the most recent might-be-custom gun I have is the Glock I put together a few months back. There isn’t a single thing thats ‘custom’ about it except for the combination of parts which is probably not terribly unusual. But, it’s certainly custom to me.

Custom guns never really ‘pay off’ in the long run. You’ll never get your money out of them, but you do get a higher degree of satisfaction and pleasure, I think, than you would have gotten out of the plain Jane version that was ‘off the rack’.

But it is interesting to note that what used to be considered custom years ago is now, to a degree, mainstream…or at least avaialble on a non-custom basis.

Aesop over at Raconteurs Report throws out a Chuck Norris-like joke about yesterdays event…

A sniper shoots at Trumps head, and its the snipers head that explodes.

Thats actually a pretty good one.

I put yesterday’s events behind me because a) the next President is still alive (see what I did there?) and b) I’m the pebble in this avalanche…nothing for me to see or do.

So…off to the range.

The Mini-14 has always had a reputation for AK-like accuracy. That is to say, there’s a reason the A-Team never hit anything. The Mini-14 was notoriously inaccurate and that was that…go buy an AR.

Ruger did a bit of product improving to the Mini-14 a while back and the reports are that they are now much more accurate than they used to be. I took this re-issue of the GB model to the range today to sight it in and see what sorta accuracy could be wrung out of it. TL;DR – much better accuracy than the old models.

I’m getting to be an old man, and open rifle sights aren’t as ideal for me to use as they used to be. Nonetheless, at 50 yards I could keep everything in a group about the size of a playing card. At 100 yards it was easy enough to ring the steel plates. I think with nicer sights the gun would benefit greatly. And, yes, I’m aware of the aftermarket options. In reality, I’ll probably throw a little red dot on this thing and go with that.

Considering I have something like three dozen AR’s tucked away around here it’s a curiosity to have anything in .223 that isn’t an AR. But you know what? Everyone has an AR, and they’re all over the place…..sometimes I like to try other stuff. So…the Mini-14, the JAKL, the BRN-180, and at some point probably an AUG and whatever .223 PTR is gonna come out with. And I’ve been toying with the idea of a 5.56 AK as well, although that itch is scratched by the JAKL.

The Mini-14 is about as rugged as any other Ruger gun, which is pretty impressive….good thing because Ruger, unless things have changed recently, has been notorious for not sending parts out to customers who wanted them. If a part needed replacing you had to send your gun to them, they weren’t just gonna drop a new bolt or trigger in the mail to you.

With the demise of Tapco (which, in itself, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing) the one trustworthy aftermarket magazine (Intrafuse Gen II Mini-14 mag) on the market is now unavailable. And, honestly, I’ve had some negative experiences with recent factory Ruger 30-rd mags although the 20’s seem to work just fine.

By the by, I have the Mini-14 and the other non-AR’s because I have enough AR’s for my preparedness needs and thus I can move on to having some ‘fun’ guns. But, for a .223 carbine for the sake of preparedness? You’d be a fool to go with anything other than an AR. Price, logistics, adaptability….can’t beat the AR.