RichardR

I'd really like to own a Gaston carbine.

Meh, no worries man doesn't seem all that silly. I try to look at it from a "current capability" standpoint, as in what exactly is this piece of equipment capable or not capable of, as it sits. So how the 5.56x45mm or 7.62x39mm cartridges perform in their carbine &/or full sized service rifle configurations was irrelevant to how I evaluated how the cartridges performed when fired out of the shorty's. I can tell you that a 55 grain FMJ 5.56x45mm fired from a 7.5" SBR or pistol will easily zip right through both sides of level IIIa body armor @ 50 yds. Granted so will a 7.62x39mm fired from a shorty, but I wasn't expecting a 55 grainer out of such a short barrel to penetrate both sides of the armor, I have a couple extra IIIa kevlar panels if you would like to see it for yourself (you have to buy the beer though). But yea I've also enjoyed our conversation, hopefully the OP &/or some of our other fellow TGO'ers all enjoyed it as well & maybe learned something along the way that helped them spend even more of their hard-earned dough.

Yea with a 10.5" barrel you should still easily expect to get reliable tumbling & fragmentation with 55 or even 62 grain FMJ bullets at 100-150 yds or less. Like you, the accuracy of my shorty AR's are also "on-par" so to speak @ 100 yds with their longer carbine/rifle breathern, but my using an Eotech on mine helps a lot with that.

I don't think it looks all that bad, not quite as sexy looking as an LCP but it appears that it might actually have useable sights on it.

Welp, she's spun up a great-big egg sack in her enclosure ... *sigh* so it looks like I'm going to be a daddy. I know where a bunch of little termites are, can't think of what else those little baby black widows would be able to eat, it'd have to be something really small & really soft ... pinhead sized baby crickets maybe?

Doubt you'd get any grief over a traditional bi-pod, I wouldn't suggest adding one of those "grip-pods" on a pistol though. Anyway TMF compairing velocities between cartridges can be mis-leading, especially when other mitigating factors like barrel lengths & bullet weights are not identical (or even close). I think if we used muzzle energy numbers it would be much less miss-leading, since that is the basis/root of how potent or impotent a cartridge has the potential to be anyway. So let's take a 55 grain bullet, traveling at the 2350fps average, which according to Hornady's ballistic calculator equals roughly 670ish ft/lbs of energy, which oddly enough is over twice the energy of a 50 grain .22WRM (300 ft/lbs) fired from a full-length (24") rifle barrel. While that is severly diminished from a 5.56 fired from a 16" AR (about roughly half), that remaining 670 ft/lbs of energy is still within .357 magnum, not .22 magnum territory. I hope that this helps put this particular "rumor" to pasture, at least here on TGO.

The high end (2,500fps) is obtainable if you use Hornady Superformance or Buffalo Bore ammunition, but most folks don't which is why I choose to use the 2,350fps middle-ground velocitiies in my examples. And I still don't how you can honestly & with a straight face can still compare the two cartridges, even with a 16" barrel .22WRM isn't even close when it is pushing a 50 grain bullet, especially if it is pushing it out of a pistol length barrel. Granted a 20+" barreled .22WRM pushing a 40 grain bullet can get up to 2,000fps but at this point the arguement gets silly IMHO, because not only have we A.) Gave the .22WRM three times the barrel length of the AR. B.) Gave the .22WRM 1/4th of the bullet wieght to push & C.) Are ignoring the additional 350fps (on average) that the 5.56 achieves out of a much shorter barrel while pushing a heavier bullet. So yea I guess minus all of the above differences between the two they are exacly the same! All teasing aside it has been an enjoyable conversation & hopefully someone else who's on the fence trying to decide between the two finds our discussion useful. Anyway yes I will agree with you that the 7.62x39mm doesn't loose quite as much velocity when the barrel length is shortened, but that doesn't minimize the effectiveness of the SBR'd or pistol-length 5.56 chambered AR's for use as a PDW. You seemed more focused on what the 5.56 cartridge looses when the barrels are shortened, instead of what potential it still retains ...

I like pancake holsters for OWB carrying of 1911's tons of them out there to choose from, just pick the style & price point which suits your needs & budget. Anyway congrats on your new Sig C3, great guns but like with any carry piece you should always thoroughly test it & the ammo you will be carrying in it prior to relying on the weapon, regardless of any brand-name reputation for reliability. I suggest a minimum of 300rds w/out malfunction, but I usually won't put a weapon into my carry rotation until it has fired 500 flawlessly through it (which I know will be harder to do in this current ammo crunch).

*shrug* I don't think anyone is arguing that there isn't a reduction in both velocity & thus energy the shorter you go on an AR's barrel length, or that the 5.56x45mm vs 7.62x39mm makes a better pistol/SBR platform. I was more interested in dispelling one of those common "gun forum myths" that short barreled AR's don't have enough energy to be anymore useful than a .22WRM, or that they only good "just for fun" which is simply not true. In my opinion & experience a 55 grain bullet, pushed out of a 7.5" AR barrel @ 2,350fps (average fps between the 2,200-2,500fps range previously posted) is still quite potent, they are infact more potent than a P90 or MP7, which no-one seems to question their meger cartridges ability to preform their inteded roles as PDW's (personal defense weapons). I own & shoot multiple rifles chambered in both cartridges of all sorts of various barrel length configurations, so I'm not "fan-boying" one over another, just trying to clear up a common misconception.

Sounds like that would make for a great brush gun, have you tried it out on hogs or whitetails yet?

I still use the old school bicycle innertube trick on my Glocks, regardless of Gen, just makes gripping them a hundred times better IHO.

Jeesh! If I had cockroaches around here that big I'd probably get a lot of trigger time with my airguns in! Hahhhahhhaaaa roaches don't get relocated, they get squished!

Yup I can see that arguement being made, however there are so many choices w/regards to 5.56/223 bullet selection these days that there is no need to just use FMJ (and rely on tumbling/fragmentation) when JHP or SP expand easily at those velocities and are widely availible.

I found a little baby rattle snake the 2nd day after moving into this house, it was sitting on top one of the boxes I had put in the storage room. Thankfully I had the airconditioner running full blast for those 2 days & it was cold and slow, thus easy to catch, didn't really want to test out the local ER on my 2nd day down here. Those baby rattle snakes haven't learned how much venom to inject, so they are especially dangerous, I have no idea how he could have gotten in there but he was apparently attracted to the smell of the fish food in the box he was sitting on top of.

I have heard this rumor a lot, however as I mentioned earlier none of the rumors I have heard about AR SBR's/pistols were true. The velocities of a 55 grain bullet in a 7.5" barrel is about 2,200-2,500fps depending on the load & the.22WRM pushes a 50 grain bullet at 1,652fps out of a 16" barrel. ... the two are not even close. The MP7 uses the 4.6x30mm cartridge. It pushes a 31gr bullet at 2,250fps. The P90 uses the 5.7x28mm cartridge. It pushes a 31gr bullet 2,350fps. So an AR w/a 7.5" barrel, pushing a 55 grain bullet at 2,350fps is still quite potent.

They just don't realize that they are causing more problems driving this technology underground by trying to stamp this out, than by allowing it to develop legitimately as a comercial venture & regulating it as any other firearm would be regulated. Same thing always happens, if it didn't there would be no such thing as a "black market". Now folks will make black-market versions without the metal slugs, completely undetectable & untraceable ... which is exactly what they were trying to prevent ... brilliant!

The day may come, but it's not today, probably not going to be tomarrow, but no-one can say for certain about what next week will bring.

As much as I'd love to see this "armed march" happen, I just think it will backfire, mostly because there are folks who would do everything imaginable in order to make it backfire. It'd be way too easy for "them" to sabotage the event & perhaps even turn it into a gigantic blood bath. The Boston Massacre (the original one) is a good example of just such a peaceful protest/march was purposely turned into a disasterous historical event by agitators.

I had always heard the same thing about AR SBR's & pistols, unreliable, underpowered (like a 22 mag), inaccurate, etc but my first-hand experiences in owning super-shorty pistol/SBR'ed AR's has proven all of the previous rumors I had heard wrong. I enjoy them quite a bit, aside from how extremely loud they are that is ...

I am guessing if they were classified as "wildlife" they'd be protected from being squished.

Awesome photos Mike! But thanks but no thanks, got more than I need around here. Pain, yea that was the conclusion that I came to after reading through all of the regs I could find. There are some federal restrictions w/regards to shipping them through the postal service but other than that no-one seems to care enough to pass legislation forbidding someone from catching & keeping a spider in a jar.

I just read through 10 pages of the class I, II & III regulations & it doesn't appear that insects &/or arachnia (even highly venomous ones) are covered at all.

Phantom, agreed I am a big "wild life" enthousiast anyway, I've kept and raised all sorts of various animals, fish, reptiles, insects, etc over the years & I just enjoy watching them. Rusty, meh I've never been squimish around critters, as a small child I lived in New Mexico & I used to catch the little scorpions that were everywhere there & would keep them in coffee cans, you just have to be careful not to get careless with them. Spiders are generally one of those critters that most folks just seem to love to hate, not sure why but they don't bother me as much as say hornets, I freaking hate hornets, especially the ones that make their nests under the ground & then you run a mower over a big nest of them & the sumbitches come out in droves, mad as hell, stinging you all of the way back to the house & then you have to wait til dark, pour 10 gallons of gasoline on the sumbitches to kill the nest off ... yea not a big fan of hornets.

Hmmm I couldn't find any insects &/or arachnia listed on that site as being catagorized in the I, II, or III lists, I only saw mammals, reptiles & amphibians. *shrug*

Anyway you guys should see the size of some of the wolf spiders we get around here, seriously no exageration the leg span on them is a good 6" on average. Thankfully my dog loves playing with them, he doesn't seem to get bitten or if he does he doesn't seem to mind it much, otherwise I have to hunt them down & toss them back outside, which sucks because they can move so fast.