300 Blackout, First Impressions

Since this is my first post, I suppose an introduction is in order.  Being raised in northern Nevada, I’ve always enjoyed shooting sports, but I never got into hunting as a child since you have a better chance of hitting the lotto in Nevada than you do drawing a deer tag.  I married my lovely wife in 2005, and after graduating from college, we moved to eastern Washington.  Since moving here, I’ve become involved in Project Appleseed and am almost a red hat instructor.  Now onto something more interesting…

Before I have any rants or political posts, I want to start with something fun so I’m going to do my best to give you an unbiased (as unbiased as possible) experience with the 300 Blackout.  This caliber has been around for a little while now and is continuing to gain popularity. I just finished my build a month ago and had the opportunity to get some trigger time with it at the last Appleseed event I was at.  A few things stand out so far.

Ammo availability sucks.  Ok, I know it’s hard finding any ammo right now, but 300 BLK is ridiculous.  Short of spending $1.50/round on GunBroker, it just isn’t going to happen.  You can reload, but good luck finding any lightweight ballistic tip.  The same thing goes with powder, not much out there for it.  Because of this, I’ve been using some Speer 130gn hollow points.  This may have biased my experience with the next point.

300 BLK can be very particular about magazines.  It’s pretty well-known that 300 BLK and Magpul don’t get along, but even with USGI mags, it’s tricky getting the bullet depth right so that it feeds through the magazines properly.  I expect that once I can get some of the more popular bullets, I’ll have a little more success with feeding.  I’ll keep everyone updated as I experiment with different bullets.  Some longer 150gn are next on the list.

Now for the good.  It feels fantastic!  It’s like the difference between a 9mm and .45.  The feel is more of a thump than a crack.  It also seems quieter than the .223 round.  When I went down range to look at my targets, the difference in diameter between the .223 and the 300 BLK is impressive.  It also seems like it’s a bit cleaner than .223, but this isn’t scientific, just my impression.  Long story short, even with the ammo availability and magazine feeding issues, I love it so far.  I know some of the issues will be worked out over time as I develop good load for my setup.  I have a bunch more thoughts on it, but we can dig deeper in another post.

BaldSinceBirth

Today’s Lesson In Manufacturing

Via a friend I discovered these two videos on 22 rim-fire manufacturing.  It’s doubly neat to me since this is factory is quite literally down the hill from me.  Some of the regulars at the matches work for ATK as well.

Neat and educational.

So you want an AR…

This isn’t as much a how-to buying guide but merely a disclaimer that right now is not the time to buy.

The most annoying thing about the post election panic is that it throws a wrench at planned purchases.  I was planning on buying more blasting ammo for Boomershoot, well when ammo started disappearing from shelves, that changed the time frame.  I did an inventory last night and confirmed, yes I needed more steel cased ammo. Since the new replacement ammo is lacquer coated steal rounds I picked up some P-Mags with it and had a nice long discussion with the owner since he’s also my neighbor.  Seriously, he lives 2 houses down from me on the opposite side of the road.

While chatting phones ring and emails come in.  The result of the calls and emails is that  I’m promptly helping them retag every AR in the place.  Now they weren’t gouging nearly as bad as they could, or probably even should.  But every rifle went up by at least an extra 100 bucks.  Now here’s why.  There is no replacement supply anywhere on the horizon, their friends were reporting they were sold out and couldn’t get replacement stock.  Their suppliers were sold out and back ordered for the foreseeable future.  Even manufactures are listing as back-ordered.  Given the sudden demand increase and a fixed supply, prices are going up.

So my advice is if you’re wanting an AR, now is probably not the best time to buy.  Prices will probably drop back now in 6 months and deliveries will move back to normal.

The same goes for ammo.  If you can survive on your current stock, do so.  Come spring thaw it will be back to normal rates and you’ll also have people trying to unload excess stock they didn’t need.  Right now a bunch of people are panicking and buying, but honestly if you wanted one for preparatory purposes, you should have done this a while ago.

ESS and Boomershoot–Volume 4

Yes I make a couple appearances… You can see me on the left as Rolf decides to juggle the explosives.  What I love is the story of the history of the anvil launch.

You learn something new every day… It does for some reason really make me want to get a cannon.  I wish I had 7 grand.

Priceless…

So last weekend Joe came out and did a private party for Barb L. and her son.  This had been planned for at least a couple of weeks earlier and since it was October we figured we’d do a pumpkin shoot.

The last two we actually did after the elections for one reason or another that’s just how it worked out.  The upshot was that’s when pumpkins end up being dirt cheap since it’s after Halloween.  Well I swung by the store the Friday before and picked up over 300lbs of pumpkins. The trick is to buy pumpkins larger than their scales.

Now why would I discuss our plans about pumpkins… Well it seems that Joan Peterson (link safe), went into full PSH(link unsafe) over a video from Hickok45Joe promptly stated that he was in agreement with Joan because there’s a better way to carve pumpkins, you just use the gun as the detonator!  So without further ado, here’s a new commercial I did…

Some things are absolutely priceless.  While certainly sending Joan over the edge to spout quotes like:

So wouldn’t it be great if families got together in their neighborhoods and carved pumpkins with handguns?

Or even better, Evil Black Rifles™ like we used here.  But you know what’s even more priceless, something her and her ilk can never recreate.  Go back and look at the smile on that kids face at the end of the video.

Or this smile:

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Or this one:

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And that was despite being soaked to the bone and freezing cold.  But wait, there’s more!

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Honestly I could keep on going with picture after picture and video after video of the grins Boomerite have created.  But since it’s Boomerite, that means a firearm has to be involved too!

We all know why Joan says these things, she’s a delusional Puritan who thinks the world revolves around her and her feelings.  I’m sure she would object to my method of celebrating the 4th of July as well.  (Not to mention this video has yet another grin and expression of happiness!).

The crux of Joan’s rant was that bullets go through stuff, evidently most bullets contain PFM that allows them to penetrate everything and keep going forever.  You see evidently, according to her, the bullets Hickok used after leaving the pumpkin were blood seekers and sought out his neighbors and killed them.  Evidently somehow the bullets can just go straight through the berm and then fly until they find a person.

Now she does use a couple of examples of people who violated the 4 rules and tries to use that as justification for disarming everyone.  First is this quote from Tam:

I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn’t. So piss off.

Second is that she’s in a world of denial, her side lost, and her only grasps for relevancy are when people break existing law and then she claims just one piece of paper would have stopped evil or stupid.  She’s wanting to prohibit exercise of this right by everyone for the actions of a few.

Honestly the thing I think she hates most about that video, is she knows there is no way for her side to compete with the joy that shooting pumpkins brings.  So I will bring that joy to someone new every chance I get.

*Now while I was actually going to spoof Mastercard to begin with, Joan’s PSH made finding a good punchline that much easier.

ESS Volume 3

Volumes 1 and 2 can be found here and here.

If you watch carefully.  You can see bullet trace as they’re shooting up on the hill.

Also, yes I have a guest appearance at the end when she’s shooting David’s pistol.

Anyone want to guess what I’m doing tomorrow…

Here’s a clue…

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I will say rolling through WinCo with two carts of pumpkins turns a lot of heads.  Doubly so when you say what you’re doing with them.

I feel a MasterCard spoof coming on… I wish I had filmed buying the pumpkins now.

And if you’re still unsure see the categories or this.

Boomershoot Volume #1

Just got an email from Ari at ESS that Volume #1 of the Boomershoot series has gone live.  See, I knew there was more.

It appears that they will be releasing the other 4 videos, one a week at 0600 Wednesdays.  I shall post them as I see them.  Their blog post on Boomershoot can be seen here.