Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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One more clip or a whole extra gun?
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The Great Black Hunter
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Gremlin and his field staff on a mouse hunt. Two foes in feldgrau fur coats fell prey to his might.
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A modern amazon.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
The bow is for deer, a tasty doe or a wide-racked hart
The pistol for evil creatures not so dear to her heart
(with apologies to those who actually write good verses)
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CZ .308 counter-sniper rifle
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Smiling wide.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
With Chris Cheng’s custom Volquartsen 10-22. (Photo by David Dyer-Bennet, edited by me.)
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Cool moustache
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Don’t wait for a knight in shining armor.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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Billy the King
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
One of my favorite fairy tales is finally available on-line.
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Faxon uppers — a better mousetrap.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
A good illustration of the regulator at work
At the recent industry shoot, I had a chance to try new Faxon AR uppers. The design is an AK-style long-stroke piston with a FAL-type gas regulator. It allows effective suppressed use without any gas blowback at the shooter. Little comes out of the ejection port: I was able to shoot left-ejecting version from the right shoulder comfortably. Felt recoil is very low.
With AWC suppressor, Nightforce scope and CTC green laser for CQB
Charging handle doesn’t reciprocate, can be switched left to right in seconds. Folding stocks are possible. The barrel can be quickly swapped between .223 and 300BLK. Field-strips very easily, with fewer small parts than a regular AR upper. Left and right ejecting uppers are made.
Scoped
Bob Faxon is left-handed, so his company pays close attention to the needs of left-handed shooters
The balance is excellent: this slightly built 12yo kid had no trouble running the medium-weight version.
A screw-on shell deflector is available.
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The mis-directed fetish of marksmanship.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
I am a great fan of armed and trained civilians. But I’d like to point out that the “hundreds of thousands of deer hunters” are no military snipers and do not overmatch regular infantry. A very well trained rifleman with a sub-MOA rifle can indeed score a first shot hit on a 500 yard foe. What happens then?
The hit may be stopped by the armor. If effective, the hit may be fatal or not: due to better emergency medicine in the army, they will save most of their non-immediate casualties. Irregulars have historically lost over half of their wounded.
The direction of the sniper would be indicated by the backsplatter from the wound. In case of a miss, the projectile trace in earth or trees would just about pinpoint the location of the shooter. At which point, the infantry would use smoke to obscure themselves from the shooter, make his egress perilous with suppressive fire and get close enough to exact retribution. The civilian shooter would have no land mines to disrupt their progress.
A really good shooter can make 500 yards hits on bullseye targets. Can he do as well on camouflaged foes who move, use cover and can put literally a hundred times his rate of fire with their squad MG or SAW? An individual rifleman might be limited to 300 yards, but a SAW with a scope fired from a bipod can reach out more than twice as far.
Assuming that the sniper can manage to retain his stand-off distance, what can he do about air or artillery response. Insurgents world-wide have to brave close combat to get away from the firepower available to the regulars with one radio call. Against well-designed sniper hides that cannot be reached by artillery or airpower, short-range rockets would be used. The hide would have to escape detection in visible, near and far infrared ranges to remain secure.
Multiple snipers might do better, but the regulars can just continue using smoke to remain safe from long shots while encircling the whole area and plastering it with mortars or just mining the perimeter and leaving it at that.
I am a great fan of rifle marksmanship. But we shouldn’t overestimate its value in warfare. Unsupported by regular troops, most snipers die quickly. Most hunters may be marksmen, but they aren’t even snipers — that skill set goes far beyond the basics of fieldcraft and marksmanship required to bring down deer.
For that reason, the reliance on armed response indicates a loss for the side forced to fight as insurgents. The kind of expedients required for a successful guerrilla campaign tend to warp all participants out of recognition as the “forces of good”. So our best bet is political proselytizing and raising the next generation to love freedom, and to respect the freedoms of others. The opium pipe dreams of the “restoration of the Republic” through another revolution are best left for those who don’t much value a connection to reality.
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A Pocketful of Wallop
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Pocket carry is one of the most discreet ways of going armed. Doing it effectively requires two things: being able to carry the weapon comfortably and discreetly, and being able to present it quickly and effectively.
The first condition is easy to satisfy with any number of tiny hideaway guns, such as the classic P32. The second condition is a bit harder. The size of the human hand wrapped around a grip is a great deal larger than the grip itself. The defender then has to flatten the hand to get it and the gun out of the pocket, then re-grip the gun for firing.There’s go to be a better way!
Kathy Jackson of Cornered Cat turned me onto CCW Breakaways at the NRA Show. I approached them without high hopes but their design actually works. The pant pockets are reinforced to carry weight, lined to eliminate printing, are adjustable in size to accommodate anything from a peashooter to a full-size 45. A friend who works in more restrictive environment than I do actually wears a Rock Island 1911 in his pocket.
Unlike belt carry, pocket carry doesn’t require a cover garment. It also allows a firing grip without anyone knowing about it.
A full size Steyr M40 rides comfortably in such a pocket. For extra safety with guns lacking manual safeties, plastic inserts are available to make the area over the trigger guard impermeable to pressure.The key to getting the gun out easily is to apply pressure up and outward, popping the two rivets at the pocket mouth. The opening instantly doubles in size and allows a rapid draw. When closed, the rivets are not visible.
Pocket mag carriers are also available. The whole system strikes me as very well thought out. The speed of deployment improves very noticeably.
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Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Being able to go from very casual to extremely purposeful in a second can be a tactical advantage.
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Single action details.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Ejector on a Magnum Research BFR in .500JRH
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Hats
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
You have probably seen my favorite green hat in quite a few photos. I got that hat in trade way back in 1999 when the guy buying my 9×18 Makarov was a few bucks short of cash and threw it in brand new. I never worn hats before but decided to try this one and loved it. It’s water-resistant, adjustable and very comfortable.
After many years of wearing this hat and using it as a photo prop, I decided to check if the same company makes other hats. Found that Henschel Hats makes a huge variety and acquired several for wearing and props. The gentleman who runs it was most helpful.
Seeing durable leather hats on my close friends, I wanted one for myself. Turns out that leather goes great with the belts, holsters and large-bore hoglegs. Below, a Henschel leather walker with a .500BFR.
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Kathy Jackson with a cornered cat.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Gremlin with Kathy Jackson of the Cornered Cat fame. While she’s a great writer and a highly regarded self-defense trainer, I get an impression that the furbie appreciates her more for being cuddly. So sexist!
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The Illustrious Jeff Folloder
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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Fun with social statistics
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Let’s postulate a society with several identifiable ethnic groups. All other things being equal, the group with highest birth rates would be considered the poorest simply because their members would be overwhelmingly young. A 20 year old typically earns less than a 40 year old simply because of lesser experience and skill set. A population segment in which 20 year olds have kids and average family has three children is going to look less wealthy than one where the first child is delayed until age 30 and an average family has two kids.
Of course, not everything is equal, so people who get better education and upbringing typically earn more. A family with two kids can invest more in each than a family with three. Moreover, a population that produces few high-investment offspring would be more risk-averse, on average. So you would have the difference between relatively well-educated individuals working in industries where opportunity does not decline with age (examples of which would be the military) and those who are less educated, may initially work in more dangerous environment by choice…the per capita wealth difference should not be surprising. At the same time, barring excessive mortality, the less wealthy population would be greatly more numerous within a couple of generations.
A population with more kids also benefits more from social services. As the kids grow up — assuming no change in the orientation towards large families — their increased voting weight enables them to get more transfer payments and the cycle becomes self-reinforcing. In reality, such a cycle would be diluted by age groups acting in concert across ethnic divides, by changes in fertility rates and other factors. That’s why sociology is such an “inexact science” — more of a philosophy than a science — pure, categorized data is hard to get and controlled experiments on a meaningful scale are difficult.
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The man who taught me how to use a camera.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
My father Ted Volk.
Taking photos out of an art museum window in Prague.
Picking on an LSD-based lifeform in Prague. (Photo by Tatyana Volk)
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A Rifleman Mirrored
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Nice Leather for Good Iron
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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