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Showing posts from July, 2020

The Ruger Mark Series

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Introduction: As far as .22LR pistols go, the Ruger Mark series has stood the test of time. The story of the Mark series is intimately intertwined with the story of Ruger itself. The "Ruger Standard Model" was actually the first product released by Sturm & Ruger in 1949. The design actually borrowed design cues from Japan's Nambu pistol from WWII. The rear cocking piece and internal bolt in leu of a traditional slide allows for a very accurate little pistol. The sights and barrel don't move during each shot, so the Ruger Mark series is a very popular target pistol. The different Mark numbers represent design iterations that the pistol has gone through over the decades of production. The MKII was the first model to introduce a wide variety of models, including three different barrel lengths and styles, blued and stainless finishes, and a 22/45 model that had a polymer frame mimicking the grip angle of a M1911. The MKIII was largely the same, except with the additio

The State of the 2nd Amendment

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Introduction: 2020 has been a year of upheaval in every facet of normal life. We started with the fear of a war with Iran, and we moved on to a global pandemic, leading into police-brutality and race riots and protests across the country. We have seen mobs of protestors storm and burn out a police station, and the White House go dark while protests raged outside. In the shadow of these riots and protests, are the everyday people and workers that are now having to work from home, or are simply laid off and stuck in their homes. The situation is unstable and fluid, so people are looking inward for their own protection. In March of this year, the United States saw more gun purchases than at any point in recorded history, at around 2.5 million.  Details: The COVID-19 pandemic has made everyday Americans learn a very valuable lesson, the hard way. The pandemic has highlighted the weakness of the state. We started off by a federal pandemic response that was centered around a lack of protecti

Suppressors

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Introduction: Popular amongst movie secret agents and modern special forces alike, suppressors are a tool in modern warfare that provides its user distinct, specialized advantages over their opponents. Suppressors function to simply make the sound of a gunshot quieter. How quiet the shot is depends on a few factors, which is why the common moniker of "silencer" can be misleading for people that have never heard a suppressed gunshot. I'm going to go over how the majority of suppressors work, some interesting history of their use, and then some of the use-cases for suppressors both by military and civilian shooters. Details: How does it work? The noise of a gunshot is pretty much caused by three things: the firearm's action cycling, the report of the bullet and hot gasses leaving the muzzle, and the supersonic crack of the bullet in flight. A suppressor can effectively take one of these out of the equation. Suppressors function by providing space for the fire and gasses