JAB

Wow. Not sure how 'new' a tactic that is, however. My dad was a long haul truck driver for many years. Trucks with built in sleepers have (or at least had, back then) one or two little vents in the side that could be opened to allow air in. He told me once that he rarely opened those while he was sleeping because he was usually a solo driver and there had been reports of thieves gassing drivers through those vents so the driver wouldn't wake up while said thieves broke into the truck. This was back in the early to mid-1980s.

It used to be a really nice little neighborhood. Was still pretty nice even when I was a kid. When it started downhill, it went pretty quickly.

Knoxville police kill man in shoot-out » Knoxville News Sentinel Wow, this one hits close to home - literally. My grandmother lived at 2314 East Fifth from before I was born until she could no longer take care of herself. I lived there while I attended UT beginning in '91 and then got a job with the Knox County Public Library and stayed there with her until I got married and moved back to Loudon in 2003. The alley where this took place parallels both Magnolia and East Fifth - it runs between the two. Our carports backed onto this alley. In fact, in the picture that is now with the article, the white building that can be partially seen on the left was our neighbor's garage and the white building on the right was directly across the alley from our carports/garage. The 'depression' in the road is a storm drain that is behind our old garage. The picture was taken from the opposite end of the alley from where the Magnolia Cafe (where the incident apparently began) sits. I've mentioned on here, before, that there was a drive-by shooting on a house across East Fifth and one house down while I was home one day. Apparently, there may have been other such shootings on that house. I am still convinced the house on the corner was a crack house. It sounds like things have not improved. And to think I didn't even carry a gun until after I moved out of that neighborhood (kept one in the drawer beside my bed, though - and used its presence to 'convince' three guys that they didn't want to continue trying to break down our front door in the middle of the night, one night.)

As a non-military person, that is also kind of what I was thinking. If there is anything a 9mm ball does it is penetrate - possibly overpenetate. I always thought the advantage to the .40 is supposedly that it has a better chance at penetrating and expanding in a JHP. With FMJ that shouldn't matter. I mean, the cult of the .40 aside, either in FMJ is pretty much a high-speed hole punch, right? Is a 10mm (.40 cal) hole really that much more 'devastating' than a 9mm hole?

For the record, I have fired a smallish 9mm Glock that my grandfather in law had for a short time. All it did for me was reinforce the fact that I don't like Glocks and they don't fit my hands well. I shoot my P3AT better than I could ever shoot that Glock. The P3AT is not a blowback gun. Neither is Ruger's copy of it. Also, part of the reason for the 'pocket .380 craze' is that the P3AT spurred ammo companies to develop better SD loads for small .380 pistols. Many of those companies actually used the P3AT as the test gun for developing those loads so that they could be matched to the type of gun they would be carried in.

So, do you guys really think the Army would leave the NATO fold insofar as getting away from the 9mm as the major handgun caliber? Being that 'M&P' stands for 'Military and Police' (as the original M&P revolver was apparently intended largely as a service sidearm for, well, military and police) wouldn't it be kind of cool if things came full circle and it once more became truly a 'Military and Police' arm? That is, assuming they are pretty good guns.

Okay, because of this thread I am going to make a conscious effort to use my concealed carry waist pack more often from now on. Matter of fact, I am going to make a conscious effort to use my non-concealed carry waist packs just to carry other stuff when I am not using the concealed carry pack to carry a firearm.

I have never even fired a Neos but I kind of like the Buck Rogers look they have going. In case you are interested (and didn't know) Beretta offers a kit that turns the Neos into a carbine. Apparently, the ATF have said that it is legal to use the kit and swap back and forth between handgun and carbine. Now that you mention that, I do remember having issues with my 22A jamming due to failures to feed a lot early on, regardless of ammo used. It got better the more I shot it so I realized it was a 'break in' issue. Then one day I polished the feed ramp to nearly a mirror shine and don't recall having a single failure to feed since.

I thought about trading my 5.5 inch S&W 22A for a Ruger because I like the 'Luger' look. After shooting mine side by side with my grandfather in law's MKII and realizing I shoot the S&W just as well if not a little better (and him telling me I can shoot the Ruger anytime I want) I decided to keep the 22A. The only 'problem' I have had with mine was when I had a case rupture on an Aguila Supermaximum hypervelocity round. The base of the casing looked like a tin can that had been opened and it blew the 22A's extractor assembly to hell and gone. I consider that the fault of the ammo, however, and not the gun. I ordered and installed a new extractor assembly and have had no further issues. I really think it is just as good as the Ruger - the only thing is there is a plastic recoil pad in the 22A that needs changing from time to time and I'm not sure if the same is true of the Ruger. One thing about the 22A is that there is an integrated 'rail' built in to the top of it in case you wanted to put some type of optic on it. That said, if I were buying one right now, today it would probably be a Ruger just because I do like the look of them. I don't use an optic so losing the 'rail' of the 22A isn't an issue, for me. I also have a Heritage Rough Rider and enjoy it, as well. In fact, it gets shot more than the semiauto. Personally, I don't think you would go wrong with any of the three.

Nope, but it was a dream that finally motivated me to get my HCP in the first place. I had been in a couple of uncomfortable situations, in real life, where I was by myself and really wished I was carrying. Because of those, I had intended to get my HCP for a long time but I had not done so. Then, one night I had a nightmare that my wife and I were together in a store when some nutjob started shooting people randomly. In the dream, he kneecapped me but didn't kill me - so there was nothing I could do but watch when he executed my wife. Then, he looked at me and said, "Naw, I ain't gonna kill you. I'm gonna let you live with that memory." Now, it wasn't that I thought the dream might literally come true that pushed me to get my HCP. Instead, it was the possibility that a more realistic life and death situation might arise and I would be just as powerless to protect my wife or another loved one from an armed assailant as I was in the dream. After that nightmare, I took the HCP test the next time it was offered at my favorite LGS. I have since had other SD dreams/nightmares but in them my firearm always works and I and mine come out safe and [physically] unharmed.

I have a few places I can shoot informally at my house, my mom's house and my sister's house. Today, I wanted to test a few of the ammo types for penetration ability from the NAA. My mom and sister (who are neighbors) have been saving gallon milk jugs for me so I tossed a few empty jugs I had into the truck and headed to mom's house to see how some of the ammo I have would do. I used standard gallon milk/bottled water type jugs. As any 'serious' use of an NAA would be pretty much a close quarters prospect and I wanted to make sure I would get more or less centerline hits on the first jug, I fired the NAA with the muzzle just a few inches (about three inches) from the first jug each time. I only had enough jugs to test the following rounds, today: 1. Remington 40 grain JHP - I wanted to test this one because it was the second most accurate from the rifle and doesn't cost quite as much as the Accu-Tip 2. Federal GameShok 50 grain JHP - I wanted to see how the heavy bullet would do 3. Winchester Dynapoint 45 grain JHP - I honestly just wondered how this ammo would do as it is the cheapest commonly available .22 WMR ammo I have found and I can buy it at Walmart I had to test the Remington twice as the first round seems to have been 'deflected' a bit as it passed through the jugs. I fired it into the first jug near the center but it exited near the right side of the back of the third jug and went to parts unknown. The second round also seemed to deflect a bit to the as it passed through but this time i was able to recover it from the fourth jug. Not bad penetration, I thought. There was zero expansion and the bullet could probably have been reloaded and fired, again. I don't know if the GameShok round I tested just didn't stabilize out of sho short a barrel and so tumbled extremely or something else. Whatever the case, it travelled in what almost seemed to be an arch - entering near the centerline of the first jug and exiting near the bottom of the third jug, clipping the front of the fourth jug as it passed by. It seemed to have plenty of 'oomph' behind it as was the only round that signficantly moved any of the jugs, causing the first jug in line to hop just a little bit into the air and fall off of the surface I had the jugs sitting on. Still, because of the 'arch' trajectory of the bullet it probably wouldn't penetrate very deeply in a flesh and blood target when fired from the NAA. That bullet wasn't recovered and, as I was getting low on jugs, I didn't bother testing that ammo, again so no pics for that one. By this point, I only had six water filled jugs left for testing. I lined them all up, just in case, but didn't expect to use them all considering I was testing WMR ammo from a mini revolver and my expectations for the Dynapoint ammo weren't extremely high. Man, did I ever get a surprise! The Dynapoint round I fired entered near the centerline of the first jug in line. I noticed immediately that it produced a perfectly round, .22 caliber entry hole in that first jug. All the other rounds tested had produced more of a 'split' type entry in the first jug with a little larger hole where the bullet itself had actually gone in. When I moved to the side of the line of jugs to check the results, imagine my surprise when I saw that all six jugs were leaking. I checked the sixth jug and found that the bullet was not in it. I looked at the hole in the sixth jug and realized that it didn't look big enough for the bullet to have passed through. At this point, I figured that the bullet was lost. Then I noticed that the exit hole in the back of the fifth jug was pretty small, too so I checked the fifth jug, just on the off chance. Sure enough, the bullet was there in the fifth jug. It had enough energy to make a hole in the back of the fifth jug and the front of the sixth but not enough to completely exit the fifth jug. So, it didn't quite penetrate into the sixth jug. Still, I think that it is pretty impressive that it cleanly penetrated into the fifth jug and still had enough energy to poke a small hole in the back of the fifth jug as well as the front of the sixth. I would not consider a mini revolver in .22 WMR to be a primary carry level of handgun in most circumstances. That said, loaded with Dynapoints and used as a weak-hand BUG I think it is not too shabby. One reason I like it for a weak hand BUG is the relatively low amount of recoil. I have both a Kel Tec P3AT and a S&W 642 that each sometimes play the role of primary when I want/need a small, light gun for the purpose. I can control either of them pretty well in a two-handed grip or even in a strong hand only grip. I don't do so well with either when firing weak hand only, however. I figure if I needed to fall back on a weak hand only firing grip then things would not going so well in the first place so I like the idea of a BUG I can control well with my weak hand only even if that BUG is in a rimfire caliber. I am honestly a little rusty with the NAA as I haven't practiced as much lately as I should (figuring if I ever had to use it to defend myself it would probably be used as a belly gun where accuracy doesn't really enter into the equation, anyhow.) Still, I thought the few targets I shot today didn't look too bad for a weak hand only shooting grip. As the NAA is pretty much a close quarters proposition, I only fired from a measured three yards, today. Notice that on this target, two rounds (the first two fired of this group, in fact) went through more or less the same hole: The Dynapoint ammo produced a slightly bigger spread (which could as likely have been my fault as that of the ammo) but all five still stayed easily within the 8 inch target. I tried it out twice just to make sure the accuracy results were more or less consistent. I think I have found my go to ammo for the NAA. Dynapoint, it is - at least until I have more jugs to do some more testing.

For some time now I've been intending to do some very informal testing of various brands/types of .22 WMR ammo from my Marlin 925M, my 6 1/2 inch barreled Heritage Rough Rider and my 1 5/8 inch barreled NAA mini revolver. I'd like to narrow things down to one or two types of ammo that work best across all three platforms. Failing that (and the more likely outcome, I believe) I would at least like to identify a 'go to' ammo for each platform. For the rifle, I figure that penetration will be adequate for the size animals I'd use it for (if I ever use it for any animals, at all) with most any good ammo brand. For it I am most interested in finding the most accurate ammo type. The mini revolver gets carried as a weak-hand BUG sometimes. That being the case as long as a given ammo type is functionally accurate at three yards or so, I am more interested in penetration from that platform. The Heritage is often used as a 'yard gun'. For that reason, short range accuracy (maybe ten to twenty five yards or so) along with decent penetration are the criteria I will need to use in choosing an ammo type for it. Last week, I made it to the outdoor shooting range where I could take shots out to 100 yards with the rifle. I ended up doing most of the testing at 50 yards then checked to see how the 'winner' did at 100 yards. Ammo types tested, firing five shot groups of each, were: 1. CCI Maxi Mag 40 grain JHP 2. Hornady V-Max 30 grain polymer tip 3. Remington Accu-Tip 33 grain polymer tip 4. Remingotn 40 grain JHP 5. Federal 30 grain Speer JHP 6. Federal GameShok 50 grain JHP 7. Winchester Super X 40 grain JHP (supposedly mirrors the load Winchester originally developed when they developed the chambering) 8. Winchester Supreme 30 grain JHP 9. Winchester Dynapoint 45 grain HP (unlike most WMR ammo, this is more of a copper washed bullet than a true jacketed bullet - this load is supposed to be intended as a 'stand in' for the old .22 WRF and isn't loaded to the velocity of most WMR loads.) 10. Fiocchi 40 grain JSP Long story short, the three most accurate at 50 yards from my 925M were (in order starting with the best): 1. Remington Accu-Tip 33 grain 2. Remington 40 grain JHP 3. Fiocchi 40 grain JSP I didn't measure groups, etc. just eyeballed them but those three were obviously more accurate, even just to the naked eye. In fact, the Accutip put three rounds through one (vertically strung) hole. The remaining 7 types gave accurace that was almost identical (again, to the naked eye) to each other. I will say that even those seven 'less accurate' rounds produced groups that could be entirely covered by the palm of my hand. I will also say that I don't bench shoot much and so don't have much practice at it - and that I was simply using the rifle case laid on the shooting table as a 'rest' so all ammo types tested probably have the potential to be more accurate than I am. By the time I was finished testing the various ammo I brought I was getting hot and tired. Also, my wife, my mom and my nephew all went to the range with me and they were all done shooting and ready to go while I was still testing. For those reasons, I didn't get any pics of the various groups. Sorry.

Interesting take and makes a certain amount of sense, I guess - although that might come into play more if you have to shoot in self defense in a more public setting. TN state law is written so that you are 'assumed' to have a reasonable fear of death or serious, bodily injury if a person breaks into your house while you are there so I would think that the burden of proof that you may not have been would be on the prosecution (although I am certainly no lawyer.). Of course, I guess if a DA really wants to push it he/she might use extremely well placed shots to try and 'refute' that assumption.

I think that depends on how 'picky' the state or LEOs in the area are about it. At least that is my take. That is why, (not knowing how 'picky' Florida is about it) I wanted to be really careful to avoid printing, just in case.

Nice. The skill set really comes in handy when you have guns you want to carry but can't find anything other than 'generic' holsters for it (my CZ82 comes to mind.) I've got a long way to go before my leather holsters look 'professional' but the ones I have made are very serviceable. I'm really wanting to get at least decent at carving leather (with a swivel knife) so I can customize/decorate them a bit. I am also starting to dip my toes in the water, as it were, with making kydex holsters, etc.

I bought a waist pack (fanny pack or whatever) that is made for concealed carry specifically for use on vacation in Florida earlier this year. Not my favorite way to carry but it does offer concealment without printing, etc. I wasn't sure how 'picky' Florida is about the whole concealment thing and didn't want to take any chances - especially since I was mostly going to be wearing t-shirts and shorts so that printing through the pocket (even with a pocket holster) might be a possibility. I used the waist pack a good bit but I also cut a piece from some scrap leather I had. I ended up carrying in my cloth Blackhawk pocket holster some and I would just put that 'panel' of leather in my pocket on the outside of the holster to prevent printing and it worked pretty well. I carried my 642. My mom and wife both carried their P32s (although not as much as I carried) and none of us had any issues or problems. From what I could/can find (including the very helpful site handgunlaw.us) Florida allows carry in state parks. We actually stayed in St. Andrews State Park there in Panama City and had no problems, whatsoever. I didn't carry when we took the ferry over to Shell Island but we were planning to be in the water a lot and I didn't want to leave it on the beach unattended, anyhow.

Kel Tec is and American company based in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Isn't Charter an American company?

I wonder if he is thinking of the hunting regulations that forbid the use of an FMJ or other 'military type' or 'non-expanding' bullet for hunting. If so, I don't think that applies to SD (even from critters) - and the solid copper Barnes bullet is an 'expanding' bullet, anyhow.

My wife and mom both have a Kel Tec P32 for their carry gun. Honestly, I wish they would carry at least a .380 but neither of them can handle the recoil of my P3AT and neither of them would be likely to carry a gun that is bigger/heavier so the P32, it is. As with my P3AT, I believe that ammo selection is of great importance with a .32. Unlike my my P3AT and the .380 in general, I am not entirely convinced that any .32 JHP currently on the market would give consistent, reliable expansion and penetration. For that reason, I advise my mom and wife to stick with FMJ. Overpenetration isn't likely with a .32 and carrying FMJ means they can practice with the same ammo they carry without breaking the bank. When it comes to FMJ ammo, a lot of folks believe that Fiocchi and S&B are a bit 'hotter' than most American brands of ammo. I don't know that I've ever even seen any S&B in the caliber but we have shot Fiocchi through both my mom's and my wife's pistols. It seemed a little 'dirtier' than some others but consistently fired and gave good accuracy.

Heh, my wife was the one who told me about the 'test' in the first place. The character she was identified with was Glenn (the Asian guy.) I'm not sure what the 'qualities' they identified in that character were but he seems like a pretty good survivor.

Too bad that, being a loyal subject, she couldn't have had a pistol in her handbag. Funny, though, it seems that even with the ridiculous gun laws over there people who intend to commit crimes can still get ahold of firearms illegally:

Interesting. I don't know if the agreement is 'still in place' or not. What I do know is that I have seen S&W guns being sold by dealers at the Knoxville gun shows where legal, private, face to face sales take place without a background check. I can also say that when I bought my 642 at my favorite LGS a few months back there wasn't any kind of certification regarding training, handling or storage - just a price that S&W had reduced by nearly $100 over the previous price.

I don't think this has been posted on here, yet. I've seen other such 'tests' but this one is on AMC's 'Walking Dead' page and identifies you with a character on the show. Notice, also, that the official site says that 'Walking Dead' will return on October 16. This was my outcome - I'm not so sure about it but its what I got:

As Thomas Jefferson advised his nephew, "Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks." Of course, it must be admitted that in this case it may not have done the victim any good. It doesn't appear, at least from the article, that he ever even saw the cowardly attack coming.

If you die outside of a hospital, etc. then Tennessee law requires that an autopsy be done unless you are under a doctor's care (I forget the correct wording.) In other words, technically even if someone dies at home of, say, terminal cancer after a long battle with same the law requires an autopsy unless that person has hospice (which is considered to be 'under a doctor's care) or something similar. Further, it could be that an autopsy will find that the shot fired was not, in and of itself, fatal. Could be that she suffered what should have been a non-life threatening injury but died of shock, a heart attack or something along those lines. I guess that would make a difference in the husband's trial, if there is one. Heh, while the P11 trigger pull does feel like it is '15 pounds and 2 inches long', for the past, several years they have had (iirc) an 8 pound pull, according to Kel Tec. I know that the one I had was so stiff, however, that my brother in law (who has plenty of experience with firearms) started looking for the safety the first time he tried to pull the trigger on the one I had (it was so stiff that he thought it had a manual safety that was engaged.) I've never fired a PF9 but it is supposed to have the same trigger setup as my P3AT which is about a five or six pound pull. You are right in that both are pretty long pulls and - being DAO - aren't any more likely to be 'accidentally' pulled than a DA revolver. That assumes, however, that he hasn't done a 'paper clip mod' or otherwise modified the trigger pull to be lighter/shorter. If he did, I imagine that will open a whole new can of worms. Then, again, the story says that the lady wanted a Kel Tec 9mm, one similar to her husband's. Given that new stories sometimes get things 'confused' it could well be that her husband's pistol is some other type that is similar to a Kel Tec 9mm, which is what she wanted.