The Guns We Own
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one things for sure these things don't jam
Matt308
Glock Perfection
You got that right, fly boy. Even when you don't take care of them, they don't jam. While they are accurate enough, they don't hold a candle to comperable weapons however. But I'd go to mine first if the zombie hordes appeared.
Graugeist, you like your Ruger Mini14? How's the accuracy? I've always wanted one, but have heard some rather disparaging comments about its accuracy. My understanding is that just last year Ruger revamped the Mini14 line to specifically address the accuracy concern. I suspect the issue is overblown. Like the old M1 Carbine, 4-5 MOA at 100yds is likely accurate enough.
Graugeist, you like your Ruger Mini14? How's the accuracy? I've always wanted one, but have heard some rather disparaging comments about its accuracy. My understanding is that just last year Ruger revamped the Mini14 line to specifically address the accuracy concern. I suspect the issue is overblown. Like the old M1 Carbine, 4-5 MOA at 100yds is likely accurate enough.
drgondog
Major
Matt - I had one, did have accuracy issues, bedded it and perhaps cut the groups in half - but not enough for me so I traded it off.
Bedding it is exactly like bedding a M-1 or M-1A1 same receiver points of contact. I have found that if the weapon doesn't shoot reasonably well (M-1) bedding doesn't help much.
I can't remember whether the quote came from Askins or Whelan or (?) but the statement "only accurate rifles are interesting' does apply to me.
I also ran through quite a few Pigeon guns to find points of impact for top and bottom barrels that suited me - but finally Briley's eccentric chokes took all the fun out of looking at shotgun patterns
Colin1
Senior Master Sergeant
I call bull**** on the line about arms coming from the US, yes some, 16000? How come nobody has traced the serial numbers back to whomever sold them or bought them? Lets see I have an unlimited supply of AK47 etc coming from other South American countries which cost maybe 300-400$s each compared to an AR15 which is running north of 800$s and the difficulty of getting thru atleast a semi guarded border compared to Mexico's southern border, plus it's been proven that the corrupt Mexican military does business with the drug cartels and it's the US's fault? NOT. Just another twisted way of trying to clamp legal, law abiding citizens who uphold the Constituion with a way of disarming them............
Anybody catch "Fast Eddy" Rendell on CNBC this morning. Got on a rant about banning assault weapons. Said assult weapons jam easy in the same sentence he mentioned the AK-47. The guy is a political hack, through and through. Ranted about guns and how he had talked with Feinstien (and others) and they were going to put the ban back.
The guy is a son of a bitch. No two ways about it. He's piggybacking on the death of those three cops in Pittsburgh to show his colors for the Obama administration. He's a lame duck Gov, has about a year and a half left and figures if he shows his liberal colors, he'll get picked up by the Obama admin when he leaves office. Either that or he becomes a consultant as he hasn't worked an honest day in the last 35 years (been a politician the whole time).
What a prick!
The guy is a son of a bitch. No two ways about it. He's piggybacking on the death of those three cops in Pittsburgh to show his colors for the Obama administration. He's a lame duck Gov, has about a year and a half left and figures if he shows his liberal colors, he'll get picked up by the Obama admin when he leaves office. Either that or he becomes a consultant as he hasn't worked an honest day in the last 35 years (been a politician the whole time).
What a prick!
Magister
Airman 1st Class
Torch, the following piece is instructive on the now perpetual repetition that 90% of the guns used in crimes in Mexico come from the U.S.
The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S. - Presidential Politics | Political News - FOXNews.com
The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.
You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.
-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."
-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."
There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:
It's just not true.
In fact, it's not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.
What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."
But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.
"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.
Video:Click here to watch more.
A Look at the Numbers
In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.
But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.
In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.
So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:
-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.
-- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.
- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.
-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.
-- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.
-- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.
'These Don't Come From El Paso'
Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.
"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."
Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."
Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.
The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years -- but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.
"Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Boatloads of Weapons
So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown "straw" buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?
Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.
The exaggeration of United States "responsibility" for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the "90-percent" falsehood -- and some Second Amendment activists believe it's designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S.
In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States -- 730,000 a year. That's a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general's office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.
Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from.
"Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this," Cox said. "The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment."
"The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"
But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the "90 percent" issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.
"Let's do what we can with what we know," he said. "We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open."
The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S. - Presidential Politics | Political News - FOXNews.com
The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.
You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.
-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."
-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."
There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:
It's just not true.
In fact, it's not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.
What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."
But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.
"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.
Video:Click here to watch more.
A Look at the Numbers
In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.
But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.
In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.
So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:
-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.
-- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.
- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.
-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.
-- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.
-- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.
'These Don't Come From El Paso'
Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.
"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."
Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."
Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.
The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years -- but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.
"Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Boatloads of Weapons
So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown "straw" buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?
Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.
The exaggeration of United States "responsibility" for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the "90-percent" falsehood -- and some Second Amendment activists believe it's designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S.
In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States -- 730,000 a year. That's a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general's office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.
Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from.
"Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this," Cox said. "The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment."
"The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"
But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the "90 percent" issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.
"Let's do what we can with what we know," he said. "We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open."
renrich
Chief Master Sergeant
Magister, I notice you have a No. 1 Ruger. What caliber? Have you shot it a lot. I don't hunt much anymore but when I did I hunted a lot on horseback and my favorite was the No. 1. Mine is a 270 Win and I used to handload for it. 58 grains of Hodgdon 4831 behind a 150 grain Nosler Partition. I had it chronographed at 3000 FPS muzzle velocity and it would print 3 shot min of angle groups all day. 2 x 7 Leupold and zeroed at 300 yards. Dropped 18-20 inches at 500 yards. Shooting from a rest or sitting with a loop sling, made a number of kills on Mulies at 500 paces or so. Incidently, for those interested, Hodgdon 4831 used to be a war surplus powder used to load 20 MM, I think, rounds.
Matt308
Glock Perfection
The Ruger No. 1 is an elegant looking single shot. But for some reason (likely unfounded) I was under the impression they weren't all that accurate. I do know that there was a recent write up in one of my gun rags about a guy who restocks and re-barrels them with French Walnut and Kreiger barrels. Man were they pretty. Can't go wrong with .270 for just about anything in the US. That would make a good rig.
Matt308
Glock Perfection
I may have mentioned this before, but I have an M1D Garand Sniper with all the accoutrements, Mk84 stadia line scope and letter of authenticity from Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP). Its mint. Got it for $600 from a CMP raffle. Last I checked it was worth a princely sum.
Magister
Airman 1st Class
My Ruger Number 1 is in .338 Winchester Magnum. I haven't shot it much. Only have put about 20 rounds through it but it was Federal's High Energy loads that develop in excess of 4,000fpe and they were not fun to shoot. I was getting about 2-1/2" groups at 100 yards but I was preoccupied with the recoil more than precision shooting so it can do much better than that.
I agree with the .270. Very flat shooting and with today's tough bullets, adeqate for anything in North America although I would still feel safer with a 338 Win if a big bear was chasing me down.
I agree with the .270. Very flat shooting and with today's tough bullets, adeqate for anything in North America although I would still feel safer with a 338 Win if a big bear was chasing me down.
renrich
Chief Master Sergeant
Way back when, and this was in the late 60s, when I bought my No. 1, believe it was $265, I did a lot of handloading and really got into the ballistics of it. Did a lot of research and working up loads. I discovered that with a 150 grain bullet and the No. 1's 26 inch barrel, it was possible to get up to 3000 FPS MV and that was more velocity than could comfortably be acheived with the 3006. Plus the 150 grain .277 bullet had a better BC than the .308 bullet so the downrange ballistics were better. The No. 1 I have was not terribly accurate with 130 grain factory loads but the heavier the loads I experimented with with the 150 grain bullet, the tighter the groups. So I gradually worked up to 58 grains of 4831. Had a friend, a retired US Army Colonel who had a chronograph and we went to the rifle range to see what was happening. He was surprised to see that the result was the 3000 FPS which my handloading manuals had forecast. The load is a max load but works well in this rifle with no extraction problems, primer flattening or case splitting. The odd thing is there is a asymetrical bright ring around the base of each fired case, regardless of whether it is a factory load or handload, which may indicate a headspace problem or some kind of chamber dimension problem but I have had no cases separate at the base after several reloadings so I have ignored it. My son in law just bought a No. 1 in 300 Weatherby Mag at a distress sale for a really low number with 150 rounds of ammo, so, unless he sells it, one of these days he will have two No 1s. The No 1 can really be fired rapidly with practise and if spare loads are kept on the belt, but one shot is usually all one needs and it is an ideal saddle rifle.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Yep Matt, I do like it. It's a nice light weapon with a soft recoil, rests easy on the shoulder and has a good rate of fire. I can vouch for it's accuracy up to about 100 yards, beyond that I'm not sure, since I've never really put it to the test. It rarely jams and is a snap to clean, so it's a definate plus to have in the collection.
Funny you'd mention the M1 carbine, that's a favorite of mine, and I think the Mini14 is comparable to it in many respects. (I have both a mid-number Rockola which I never shoot and a well-used Saginaw which I do...lol)
My Mini is about 25 years old and was well-built, so I'm wondering if the quality of the Mini14 declined some over the years, leading some folks to complain about it's performance.
* And nice collection, dragncar, welcome to the forums! *
Hey Drgondog,
I've pulled apart a few M1A, M1 Garands, and Mini-14s before. The receivers aren't all that different, but the gas system on a Mini-14 is more like a M1 Carbine than a M14 rifle. The wooden stock can NOT be clearanced away from the "Op rod" as you might do on M1 and M14. Accuracy of the couple I have fired is about as poor as the ones you all are describing. The rear sight is also a bit too coarse in adjustment in the standard gun and not worth describing in the Ranch Rifle.
- Ivan.
I've pulled apart a few M1A, M1 Garands, and Mini-14s before. The receivers aren't all that different, but the gas system on a Mini-14 is more like a M1 Carbine than a M14 rifle. The wooden stock can NOT be clearanced away from the "Op rod" as you might do on M1 and M14. Accuracy of the couple I have fired is about as poor as the ones you all are describing. The rear sight is also a bit too coarse in adjustment in the standard gun and not worth describing in the Ranch Rifle.
- Ivan.
I personally haven't ever tested this theory, but my understanding is that generally mediocre accuracy from the Ruger No.1 is because of the way the wooden foreend is hung on the gun. Folks try to isolate the wood from the barrel and sometimes put in a tensioning screw to put pressure from the foreend hanger to the barrel and tune it for accuracy.
- Ivan.
- Ivan.
