American Defense Enterprises » Instruction

Kahr PM9 Failure

j k — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:17:07 +0000

Thanks to TheFirearmBlog for this story.

Since it seems like a few people have been looking at the PM9, this story would be of interest.

Short summary: during range visit, a PM9 “blew up” in the shooter’s hands while using factory ammo… Notice the failed extractor and side panel.

As you read the rest of the story it turns out the shooter may have been using reloads, the seemingly main cause for all the Glock KaBOOMS! that have led to Glocks being called grenades.

To be honest though, it looks like the damage is a little different.

Here is a photo of an exploded glock-nade:

This explodes near where the round is chambered due to an unsupported casing. This problem seemed to be most reported with the .40’s.

So the PM9 looks to be a different mechanism to me. Probably too much energy in the recoil that made the slide come back with excessive force — yay for double charged reloads :-p. Kahr was apparently excellent with the service.

Spotting Concealed Handgun

j k — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:16:04 +0000

Saw this… seemed of general interest.

Clips vs Magazines

j k — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:22:13 +0000

I thought this picture demonstrated it pretty well…

Safety Rules… Just a Random Reference.

j k — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:14:29 +0000

In ADE, we talk about the 4 rules of gun safety. Since sometimes people talk to one another, it is probably worth pointing out the following:

ADE Rules for Safety (Jeff Cooper-esque)	NRA Rules for Safety
ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET AND WHAT IS BEYOND	ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot. ALWAYS keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

Safety is a mindset. Lists of rules often just make people that like to make lists happy. But, the obvious difference is obvious — in combat handgun, the gun is always in a state where it is ready to use…. Then again, “all guns are loaded” isnt really much of an action that I can follow.

Eh. Im not sure anybody cares…. Consider this a post in gun culture education.

Swearing makes you feel better. #$!% yeah!

c k — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:41:17 +0000

I can only think of all the pain my parents caused me growing up by telling me not to swear. !@%# that! We all know that swearing makes you feel better when you are in pain. In a report published in this weeks journal NeuroReport researchers at Keele University in England submerged the hands of college students into ice-cold water and measured their pain tolerance, heart rate and perceived pain when saying a neutral word compared with a swear word. No surprise here – swearing increased pain tolerance and heart rate while decreasing perceived pain.

Based on the result psychologist Richard Stephens who led the study said “I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear.”

Story

NeuroReport Article Abstract

Rifle and Pistol Cartridge Size Reference Pictures

j k — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:36:27 +0000

I found these nice pictures I thought I would share that show the relative sizes of MANY MANY pistol and rifle rounds.

1Jul07 pistol caliber comparison chart

Israeli Galil Rifle

j k — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:41:18 +0000

In case you were ever interested in the Israeli made Galil assault rifle, DoubleTapper has posted a very detailed article on the history and function. Additionally, he posted a great picture post of the firearm.

And you thought his blog was only with reading for the pictures of hot girls in uniform..

Article on Precision M16 work

j k — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:33:42 +0000

Have an AR? Want to use it in precision work? I found a nice online article here (earlymaturity.com).

When/how to adjust the front site of your upper.

Importance of consistant sling tension.

Which bullet weights are best for the various barrel twist rates.

Tips for marking your windage/elevation knobs.

All geared more towards competitive shooting, but, it’s good material.

(reproduced for archival purposes below)

Consistency is accuracy! When it comes to rifles setting up the sights is an essential part of mastering the sport. This left view of my 2004-2005 season AR-15 shows that this one has a 1/4 minute per click sight installed. Specifically it the picture shows a Bushmaster 1/4×1/4 NM rear sight assembly installed on a Colt H-BAR upper receiver. It is an excellent sight producing good repeatability but even this unit is no longer state of the art for competition AR’s.

In the winter of 2005 I switched to a White Oak Precision upper receiver with a pinned 1/4×1/4 rear sight. It has two stainless steel pins that constrain all rotation of the assembly giving it the same micrometer level precision as one would find in a match gun sight like a Centra, RPA, Zelenak, et al. It takes precision and repeatability to a whole new level and once again confirms the AR-15 is in a class without peer for use in Service Rifle competition. To be complete M-16/AR-15 sights come in 1 MOA, 1/2 MOA, 1/4 MOA and even 1/8th MOA configurations.

On to marking the sights. The school book solution is to start with placing a mark on the elevation drum indicates the base setting for the rifle roughy 6 MOA up from bottoming the rear sight. The 6 MOA of cushion is important so you can dial down for 100-yd matches and use other ammunition that has different drop characteristics. Do not make the mistake of bottoming the rear sight. Also place an accompanying mark on the left side of the sight is used to quickly verify that the drum is not out of position by a full turn, something that can easily happen at 4 clicks per MOA.

With the rear sight in this position, the front sight is adjusted for elevation by test firing to locate the 200-yard zero and dialing the front blade. If you have a match front sight that has a tapered blade you will likely need to rotate the sight so it hits a little low and file down to make the final adjustments.

Cheating trick. I actually set my rear drum and put the reference mark at 4 MOA up from the bottom and dial the front sight in for elevation at 100 yards then work out the number of click to dial up for 200, 300 and 600. That’s because as a civilian competitor it’s easier for me to find shooting ranges where I can re-check the sights at 100 yards and you don’t need a target puller to help you.

IMPORTANT STUFF:

Do this sight tuning only after you have broken in your barrel and be sure to use the loads you will be using for the short range portion of the highpower course, 200 and 300 yards.
Do make sure the loads are accurate. All AR-15’s are capable of sending rounds from good ammo into a quarter at 100 yards.
As a rule, 1-12 barrels like 52gr to 55gr bulltets best, 1-9 barrels seem happiest with 62gr to 77gr, and the highpower competition 1-7 and 1-8 twist barrels enjoy 69 gr to 77gr loads as far as magazine length ammunition is concerned.
80gr loads do not fit in magazines and are strictly 600 yard slow fire stage ammunition. If you use 80’s, work on them for your reference sheet separately.
In case you are wondering I am presently using remanufactured Black Hills 75gr Moly’s for reduced and across-the-course matches plus 80gr Sierra Matchking Moly handloads for LR matches.

Windage marks for the AR-15 start with filling the grooves in the rear sight with nail polish to make the marks more visible. The traditional color to use as seen in the photo is a bright red or as some call it “streetwalker red”. However I am now finding I prefer yellow or white better.

You then fire the rifle in a no wind condition to locate the windage zero position for your sight. Once found paint a horizontal mark across the windage drum as shown. This is the home base setting of the sight you will use for competition. Always go back to this windage zero for each stage and dial in your wind compensation from there. Chase the wind with a mouse gun at 600-yards for a half-an-hour on a windy day and you’ll believe in home basing the sights every stage soon enough.

Once the rear is set up to mechanical center it becomes easy to put on the initial dope, in the case of the rifle in the photo 1 click left of the mechanical zero of the sight, to set up the rifle for the first sighting shot.

If you are fortunate enough to have one of the AR-15 front sight towers with the adjustable hex screws you can further target the rifle so that mechanical center of the rear sight is also windage zero. My competition rifles now have this feature and they are both a blessing and a curse. The procedure is one of patience and tiny movements because the height of the AR-15 sight tower amplifies a hair width of rotation to about a bullseye wide shift. Due the the nature of the language that may result it may be best to make sure no small children are within earshot while you are perfroming this procedure. I highly recommend a tool called an M-16 sight alignment gauge. It’s a rod that goes into the carry handle an allows you to optically see the movements in the front tower as you make them with great precision. Then I can visually confirm exactly how stupid that last 1/8th of a turn of the allen wrench really was.

If your barel is not free floated,

You have your work cut out for you in a highpower rifle match. It is critical that you manage sling tension to be exactly the same from shot-to-shot. This is a chore not to be taken lightly as to it’s true degree of difficulty. Perfecting exact sling tension for 22 rounds in 22 minutes of slow fire will raise our metal and physical conditioning to new heights. Consistency in placement of the hands on the forearm is important. It is after all 50% of the biomechanical connection between you and the gun. The red mark shown provides a reference check. You may actually place your hand slightly ahead of the mark for one position and slightly behind it for another for sitting versus prone. Having the mark in place reminds you of the impotance of going to the right place every time.

The other thing you need to do is memorize the position of every fingertip on the gun almost like playing a chord on a guitar or violin. No kidding. Treating the foreend of an AR-15 like it’s a Fender makes a big difference in making up for the deficiencies of an un-floated barrel. I’ve tried this experiment with the old thin tube Viernam-era barrel. Air guitar is a good thing. Other rifles that share this musical instrument precision quality to a lesser extent are service-grade M-1 Garands and the M-14/M1A’s. In the case of the Garand, it has a lot in common with a violin that spits but that’s what makes as-issued CMP matches so much fun.

If your barel is free floated,

Welcome to another reason why the AR-15 kicks every other rifle’s tail in competition. The float tube makes this rifle amazingly forgiving about lapses in sling tension precision. Reasonably consistent now makes the gun very happy. What this really does is allow you to reallocate your mental energy to other aspects of making the shot like sight picture repetition and keeping ahead of the wind. It makes a big difference in your energy budgeting during a match.

EFF publishes guide on surveillance self-defense

j k — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:42:14 +0000

https://ssd.eff.org/home

The link is even SSL based for secure web browsing .

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the most well known organization for protecting your rights in the digital domain. Their surveillance self-defense guide is a 10,000 ft comprehensive view on the various techniques that can be used to spy on you electronically. While, we are slowly becoming a country where people are complacent about the government watching us all the time. Realistically, it accomplishes very little by means of stopping “Terrorism” and does a great deal in terms of shifting power out of the hands of the citizens. Further, the potential for abuse is large.

This guide is quite relevant for our times…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_abuse

http://www.aclu.org/police/spying/index.html

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/feb/12/fort-pierce-police-officer-charged-stalking-ex-gir/?partner=RSS

etc etc etc

wikiHow – How to Clear a Building with a Firearm.

c k — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:21:09 +0000

So, you want to learn how to Hard Boil and Egg, Pick a Lock, Make a Christmas Tree Pop up Card, or even Maintain a Pistol from someone who are likely not experts in any way on their subject and written articles of questionable utility? Well look no further than wikiHow to improve your wikiLife with new wikiSkills.

Actually, I was recently very surprised to see this well written article on How to Clear a Building with a Firearm. I have no idea who wrote the article (wikians?), but it contains some fairly good information similar to that taught during handgun classes. Granted it will never replace practice, but some of the concepts like the fatal funnel and cutting the pie are covered if you need to refresh your memory after class.