This’ll Scare Sarah Brady Spitless!

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Fun!

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It followed me home…

It followed me home, at least that’s what I’m going to say when my relatives and friends ask me why I bought yet another rifle. Me, depression and lots of cash don’t mix well. It makes it harder to tell yourself “No!”

I’d been drooling over this rifle for months now, and with the above mentioned circumstances being what they are, and factoring in a possible Obama/Biden presidency, I gave in to my baser instincts and plunked down the cash for this bad boy. And what a bad boy it truly is! That rustling sound you hear is my future paper targets quaking in fear.

Gun grabbers and people suffering from severe cases of PSH should leave now. You have been warned.

You’re looking at a Bushmaster Varminter in .223/5.56mm with the 24″ fluted and parkerized chrome-moly barrel. The rest of the rifle is finished in a matte black. The rifle comes with a flat top upper and has scope mounts already installed. I personally like the A2 buttstock better than the adjustable one, and the pistol grip fits my hand like it was made for it. It only came with a five round magazine, but I’ll be remedying that shortcoming soon. I love the two stage match trigger! There’s a very light first stage with a detent at the end, and just a little more pressure on the trigger and it lets off smooth as glass. I don’t have a trigger pull gauge, but I’d put it right in the 4.5 pound area. I outfitted it with a Bushnell Banner 4-12×40 scope with the adjustable objective,  a Rock Mount pivot bi-pod and a Uncle Mikes padded nylon ultra sling. I have yet to take it up to the range, but when I do I’ll have a full range report complete with pictures.

Click pictures to embiggen…

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Plate Match

Some days you’re the windshield, and some days you’re the bug…

Well, it’s not shooting at Blackwater with Todd Jarrett, but it was fun (mostly) all the same.I will state right up front that the gun performed flawlessly. All errors and misses were entirely my fault.

I did okay mostly, but it seems I’ve developed a bad habit of “losing it” when I shoot against someone else. Seriously, when I’m shooting the plates without being in competition, no sweat, I can do that all day, but put me head to head with someone and my grip falls apart and I rush things when I don’t need to. Below is a video of me doing it right for a change. I’m on the right.

In this video you can see me shooting five plates, four discs and one duck with six shots in about three seconds. Yeah I missed the duck on the first try.

Here’s a shot of the .22lr rack to illustrate what I’m talking about. The two poppers below are for the centerfire, autoloader and revolver divisions only. These are shot at 14 - 15 yards.

Piece of cake, right?

After the competition was over I convinced Jeffersonian to leave the plates up for a few minutes so people could practice. Wouldn’t you know it, I knocked them down repeatedly in five to seven shots; five shots being the norm.

There are at least three things I noticed about myself at the match. The first is my grip. If I concentrate on gripping the pistol in such as way as to leave my trigger finger “floating” I have much better luck hitting the target. Otherwise I find myself with a “death grip” on the gun and my shots tend to go low. I also need to work on not stressing out when shooting against someone else.”Hurry up and take my time” is a mantra I need to take to heart.

And the last thing…

Put a fracking magazine in the gun before shooting in a match! Yes folks, I actually did it, or didn’t do it, depending on your point of view. I don’t know how I managed to do it, I just know that I did it.

I hereby award to myself, the Special Bonehead Award for forgetting to put the magazine in my gun at the match.

Anyway, here’s a cool shot of me qualifying at the match. Notice the gas jets coming out of the compensator, the bolt on it’s way back under pressure and the empty case just clearing the ejection port. You may have to click the image to biggify it for the details.

Thanks to Jeffersonian for an outstanding photo!

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Range Day

After this morning’s gun show, Jeffersonian and I went up to the range. He wanted to chronograph his Garand loads and I needed to sight in my Ruger 22/45 since I switched to a more visible reticule. I needed to  check the sights on my SKS as well. I only had twenty rounds for the SKS, so I got it sighted in at fifty yards with fifteen rounds and then took it down to the lower range to chronograph five rounds of my hand loads. I got it sighted in pretty quickly too, the other rounds were just because I could…and it was fun!

First the Ruger 22/45.

All went well with getting it sighted in. I had to go up seventeen clicks on the scope to compensate for the drop in POI when I changed reticules. Once I did this I was putting all of them inside a one inch circle at fourteen yards. Now I have the much more visible circle and dot instead of the easy to lose 1MOA dot.

I got the SKS sighted in so all the shots were hitting in the black at fifty yards and went down to the lower range to chronograph the last five rounds. I aimed at the top black circle and squeezed the trigger. Jeffersonian wrote down the MV for me and decided to check the spotting scope for S&G’s. I had a solid hit in the black at one hundred yards. I shot the last four shots the same way and they all hit inside the black, three of my five shots actually touching each other. If I didn’t have photographic proof I wouldn’t believe it either! In the photo below, you can clearly see the three shots at the 12 o’clock position, one below them at the 11 o’clock position and a flier at the 5 o’clock position. Just so we’re clear, the dot on my red dot scope covered the black dot of the target completely at one hundred yards. I basically covered the black dot with the red dot and fired. This was with my handloads which I made a while back. I need to find my load data!

Here are the MV’s for the five rounds chronographed:

2,209
2,263
2,251
2,219
2,230

Average Muzzle Velocity = 2,234.4 fps.

Jeffersonian informs me:

“Cartridges of the World, 11th edition, says 2300 for Federal factory, 2365 for Winchester and Remington factory, all with 123gr SP; 2329 for “Military load” with 122gr FMJ (Wikipedia says 2300 for 123gr); 2300 for “Black Hills factory load” with 123 SP and 2200 for the same with 150 SP.  So it seems you’re a tad slow.”

As was demonstrated, the handloads I made work very well so I’m inclined to make more of them, whenever I find the load data, but I’m not adverse to making some “full power” rounds to see how they perform.

All hail Loctite! Thanks to it, my rifle appears to be hitting what I’m aiming at now! Thanks also to Jeffersonian for the photos, information and graciously allowing me to use his chronograph!

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The Texas Star Target

My gun club seriously should get a couple of these for use in the plate match. Jeffersonian?

Don’t they look like a lot of fun?

Here’s a video of one being shot (along with some paper targets).

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Apparently I’m a Libertarian…

I took this small political quiz and according to it, I most fit into the Libertarian philosophy. I agree I share many of the same beliefs, but I’m turned off by their immigration policy and their views on the GWOT. I could have sworn though that I leaned more Right than Left. Oh well, here’s my results. Go take it yourself if you want, it’s (really) short and takes no time at all.

ACCORDING TO YOUR ANSWERS,

The political group that
agrees with you most is…

.

LIBERTARIAN

LIBERTARIANS support maximum liberty in both personal and

economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one

that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence.

Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose

government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate

diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

The RED DOT on the Chart shows where you fit on the political map.

Your PERSONAL issues Score is 100%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 80%.
(Please note: Scores falling on the Centrist border are counted as Centrist.)

Update: Here’s my results from the test DRZinn referred to. Personally, I think the real results should be somewhere in between.

Your political compass

Economic Left/Right: 2.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.56

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