I shot a PPC match today with two weapons, a HK USP Compact .45 and a S&W Model 19. Frankly, I suck with automatics (other than my 22/45). I barely made it into the sharpshooter category with the HK, while with the Smith, I just missed the master category.* And no, it's not the sight radius or that, for I shoot a police-stock Model 10 almost as well as the M-19. The last time I shot both a M-10 and M-19, I shot the same numerical score, albeit with two more X's on the -19.
And then there is the going hither and yon to find the brass on an automatic.** With a revolver, even on a fast reload, the brass is right at my feet. Frigging automatics litter. Revolvers are more civilized.
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I'm sure, by know, everyone has heard about how the cops in Georgia tossed a flash-bang grenade into a baby's crib and pretty near burned the kid's face off. The cops, of course, see nothing wrong with tossing grenades into a room and burning people.
Matt G, an active-duty cop, has had enough of that shit. He's right, good guys don't heedlessly throw freaking grenades into rooms. Soldiers do that, but combat's a wholly different world.
Peace officers don't do shit like that. But we seem to have precious few peace officers on duty anymore.
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I'm catching up with some of the later books written by Robert Parker. I was an early fan of his stuff, but when the early-mid `80s came around, his stuff began to suck. Sometime later, it got better.
But Parker knew fuck-all about guns. In Chance, Spencer is carrying a short-barreled Smith & Wesson revolver (other books mentioned that he had a Chief's Special). Spencer carries the gun with an empty chamber under the hammer. That's just madness. Smith & Wesson hand-ejector revolvers have rebounding hammers since they were introduced in the 19th Century; they gradually added a hammer block to their guns by the 1920s and redesigned it in the 1940s. Colt's "Police Positive" have had a hammer block since around 1905.
OK, so if you have a Colt Peacemaker or one of the German/Italian clones, you'd be safer keeping the chamber under the hammer unloaded. But for all modern double-action revolvers, keeping the chamber under the hammer empty means you are giving up a round that you might need.
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* One of the other shooters said: "That HK doesn't seem to run very well. I'll give you $300 for it." I couldn't turn down that offer fast enough.
** Yes, I know that the correct term is "autoloader". Sue me.
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3 comments:
Glad you had a good day at the range! :-)
Congrats on a good range day!
For whatever reason(s), I shoot substantially and consistently better with a K-frame (M-66) than with a Glock 19. For that matter I'm better with an N-frame than with a K-frame, but there's a point beyond which carryability (is that a word?) becomes a major factor.
An old M-10 would be really nice.
I was always a fan of Rbt. B Parkers books, too (he passed away a year or two ago), but mostly to keep up with the characters, toward the end. His plots were pretty much the same: Go stir around until the bad guys make a move on him, and then take action. His dialogue was good, though. I have always cringed at his failings in firearms knowledge.
Frankly, his Jesse Stone novel series (set in the same universe as Spenser and the Sonny Randall series) was pretty good. His knowledge of police procedure was if anything worse than his knowledge of firearms, but his stories about a smart cop running a small-town police department were good.
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