Snowflakes in Hell

Met up with Traction Control tonight over at Ready, Aim Fire in Bristol. He rented an MP-5 submachine gun. Got to shoot a magazine through it. The house MP-5 was in some dire need of cleaning and some fresh magazine springs, but any time I get to shoot a submachine gun I think “Man, we really need to get rid of that Hughes thing.” Full auto is a lot of fun even when it’s not running as well as it could, and sometimes submachine guns can be finicky.

Two notables tonight are that I got to shoot my Webley Mark IV for the first time, and I enjoyed it. Much less recoil than I would have thought, but that’s probably because it’s a rather heavy pistol firing a relatively anemic round. That crossbar safety has to go though. It’s rough to switch, and a general pain in the ass. It gets in the way of the enjoyment of the pistol. Eventually I think I need to find a Webley that hasn’t been mutilated for the sake of being legally importable.

I also got to shoot my Glock for the first time in a length of time I’m embarrassed to admit. I compete with air guns and .22s these days, so not much trigger time on the Glock. The problem is, my club has a lot of stupid restrictions on how many rounds you can put in your magazine, and drawing from a holster, so I can’t really practice self-defense shooting there. I don’t end up practicing self-defense shooting as much as I really need to for carrying a pistol around in public. That’s not to say I shot badly. Getting trigger time, any trigger time, keeps your skills from totally going to s**t, but I was shooting better practical pistol two years ago than I am now.

Drawing from holster, using my iPhone shot timer, I was getting somewhere between 1.5 seconds and 2.5 seconds between buzzer and aimed shot on target. At least I think. It’s hard to tell on a busy range which shot registered was yours, so it comes down to “I know I’m not that fast, but I’m pretty sure I’m not that slow.” Overall, out of the holster I’m in an area of about the size of a DVD container at 25 feet. That’s decent, but I did pull one shot pretty far off, which I’m a bit appalled by. I’m also unhappy that on about a 1/4 of my draws I had a grip that caused the slide to scrape against the web of my hand. No bloodshed from a slide cut, but not comfortable either. Whatever mojo Todd Jarrett imparted with his instruction has definitely departed due to lack of practice. That seems like it was a long time ago. Hopefully I’ll get out to a few practice shoots this season and top my skills back up.

Who knows. Maybe one day my club will come into the gun culture of the 21st century and we’ll have some practical shooting, or steel plate shooting where I can get some more practice in under time pressure and from a ready stance or from the holster.

This IPSC like stage with submachine guns looks like a hell of a lot of fun. Seems the winning strategy is to have a drum mag of some kind. The folks with .22LR submachine guns seem to do well just mowing down the bowling pins:

Courtesy of Vegas Shooters. Click here if you can’t see the embedded link above.

UPDATE: Sorry folks, I didn’t realize it was set to auto play. Next time that happens let me know. I will never intentionally set up anything to auto play on this blog. If you see it, it’s a mistake.

This will be the concluding post for Full Auto Day. If there’s one thing that I’ve tried to feature in this series, it’s ordinary people having fun shooting machine guns and assault rifles, as happens in various locations around the United States every year. Why does anyone need a machine gun? Because machine guns are really friggin fun! I’ve never seen anyone who wasn’t intrinsically hoplophobic, or recoil shy, shoot a machine gun and not walk away with a big shit eating grin on their face. I’ve shot my friend Jason’s M11 dozens of times, and I still get a big smile on my face every time I send a mag full of 9mm downrange. When I first tried a suppressed H&K MP5 submachine gun, I briefly for a moment considered whether it might be a good idea to sell my car to buy one. Unfortunately, the MP5 wouldn’t be very good at getting me to work, so that idea was quickly abandoned.

So that brings me to the reason that machine gun shooting is becoming increasingly the domain of the privileged few because of the stratospheric prices on registered machine guns.; Congressman William J. Hughes, who, as I nicely added to his Wikipedia Entry, is responsible for banning civilian possession of machine guns not already lawfully registered prior to May 19, 1986, despite there being virtually no history of crime being committed with legally owned machine guns in the United States. Why’d he do it? Because he’s another gun hating asshole from New Jersey (I hope he googles his name and manages to read that too). If you want to see more information, take a look at Dave Hardy’s 1986 Cumberland Law Review article about the FOPA, or Gun Law News’ summary of the FOPA.

Because I’m really wanting to have way more full auto fun than I can currently have, I’m quite eager to be rid of the Hughes Amendment. Unfortunately, the NRA has largely given up on machine guns. As much as I wish they didn’t, the sad truth is current political climate isn’t conductive to accomplishing anything on this ground. Over the next few years we’ll be lucky just to fight off more semi-auto bans. We’re also probably not going to have much luck in the courts in this regard either. So what to do? Well, we have to keep chipping away bit by bit, until we change the political climate to the point where it’s feasible to get rid of it. In the mean time, I think it’s important that we figure out ways to present machine gun ownership and shooting in a positive light to the general public.

But if the Democrats want a fight, we can always do to them what they did to us. If those slippery bastards try to close the “gun show loophole” or other such crap, why not slip a repeal of the Hughes Amendment in right before debate closes, and pass it on a questionable voice vote. It’s a little low, sure, but what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If you can’t defeat a bill, adding a little “f*ck you” amendment is always a nice touch.

Well, I hope everyone liked today’s Full Auto Day. I’ll maybe do special interest features like this in the future. Stay tuned!

I don’t really like commies much, but I sure do love the guns they produced.  The Russians learned very quickly at the hands of both the Finns and the Germans how deadly effective submachines guns could be in combat.  The Russians needed to develop their own submachine gun pretty quickly, and of a simple enough pattern to be easily manufactured.   Luckily, George Shpagin was able to come up with a design that worked, and worked well.

The PPSh41 is a blowback operated submachine gun that fires from an open bolt.  Chambered in 7.62×25mm.  It accepts a 34 round box or 71 round drum magaine, and has a cyclic rate of fire of 900 rounds per minute.  Earlier models had select fire capability, but later models were full auto only.  The model here is showing with the drum mag.  The Soviets discovered drum mags were too cumbersome to use, and not reliable enough under combat conditions, so in 1942 they developed a box magazine.

That’s quite a burst.  I believe there are a fair number of these that are transferrable out there.

Can’t find a real AK-47 here to shoot?   Try Cambodia:

You can impress the dudes by already knowing how to handle a Kalashnikov.  You can even shoot RPGs for the right price. Just don’t be a chode and blow up a cow, ok?

There hasn’t been a truly innovative 45 caliber submachine gun produced, that can think of, since the Thompson. The folks at Transformational Defense Industries (TDI), have come up with a really novel one, that I just must own, but can’t, thanks to the Hughes Amendment.

Here’s a video of it straight from SHOT 2007:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6654700044795906272

The Robinson Arms XCR rocking out on full auto:

Damn you Congressman Hughes! Damn you!

If you only have a couple grand to spend, there are some choices out there for you. In this post I’m featuring my friend Jason’s Cobray M11 9mm machine pistol. He got his a few years ago for $1500 bucks, plus the $200 NFA tax. Prior to 1986, I believe these could be had for $400, plus the $200 NFA tax. Today they are going for more than 3 grand.

I’ve actually shot this particular machine pistol. Compared to an MP5, it’s a little rough to shoot, and difficult to control, but with a little practice you can get pretty decent with it. If you use the metal magazines, and use decent ammunition, it’ll function pretty reliably. With the metal mags inserted, the stock won’t go all the way in like it will with the plastic ones, but the plastic mags don’t tend to be as reliable. Like I mentioned, it’s also finicky about ammunition. We’ve had bad luck with Sellier and Bellot and Wolf. Domestic or quality import works well. The M11 has a high rate of fire, so it empties the magazine quickly. There are kids that can reduce the cyclic rate though, and also kits to convert it to .22LR for cheaper full-auto fun. Here’s Jason shooting the M11:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5915823085654945068

I have the CM11, which is a semi-auto carbine version of the M11 with a fixed stock. It’s not nearly as much fun to shoot though ;) The CM11 is pretty much the same, except it fires from a closed bolt. The ATF generally won’t approve open bolt designs for semi-autos because of the ease of conversion.

UPDATE: Sorry folks.  I didn’t realize the video would autoplay.  I changed it to a google video.

The Russian have developed a very novel replacement for the AK74 assault rifle, known as the AN94 Abakan. If there would be any rifle who’s existence makes me want to strangle Congressman Hugues (more about him later), it’s the AN94.

It’s chambered in the same 5.45×39mm round the AK74 fires, but it’s mechanics are totally different than the Kalashnikov. The operating system is called “blowback shifted pulse”. It uses a pulley mechanism, in addition to a standard gas system, to chamber and fire another cartridge for a single stroke of the piston. This allows the AN94 to have a selective rate of fire of 600 rounds per minute, or 1800 rounds per minute. It can also fire semi-automatic, or two shot burst. But the cool thing about the Abakan is that it puts the shots so close together, that the muzzle has no chance to climb before the second shot leaves the barrel. This puts the two rounds so close to each other, that it effectively strikes the same place twice, which is apparently quite effective at defeating body armor. The Abakan has not yet proven itself in combat yet, but just for sheer novelty of the design, I’d love to own one.

Here’s one in action with a Spetsnaz commando.

On burst mode fire, you can barely distinguish the two shots, but I’m pretty sure this is burst mode fire, because it doesn’t quite sound clean enough for single shot.

No full auto day would be complete without talking about the rifle that set the pattern, giving meaning to the life of we Evil Black Rifle shooters. The Sturmgewehr 44:

The SG44 was the first assault rifle, and the concept was later adopted by the Soviets in the famous and ubiquitous AK-47. Unfortunately for the Germans, and fortunately for us, they weren’t able to produce them in large enough numbers to affect the outcome of the war. The SG44 was originally called the Maschinenpistol 43, but Hitler canceled the project, but the army wanted it badly enough that they saved it by renaming it Sturmgewehr, or “Assault Rifle”. The SG44 fires a medium power version of the German 8mm, the 7.92 ‘Kurz’ round.

Here’s some crappy video of a lucky bloke firing one.

I think if you ever have the opportunity to shoot a rarely encountered piece of history such as this, you should take care to get good video!

Of course, what good is a historical post about Hiram Maxim and his machine gun, if you don’t get to see one in action.

I love the sound of machine guns in the morning.

Ask people on the street who the most influential people of the 20th century were, you’ll probably get a lot of answers; Hitler, Stalin, Marx, Lenin, etc. I have a different answer:

Hiram Maxim With His Machine Gun

Maxim’s invention of the belt-fed water cooled machine gun would spell the end of Europe’s geopolitical significance by the end of the 20th century. From 1914 to 1918 the great empires of Europe made suicidal charges into the wall of lead laid down by Maxim’s invention, and lost entire generations of young men in the process. World War I greatly weakened Britain, and laid the foundation for the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. World War II finally killed off the British Empire, along with every other colonial European power. The face of the world would never be the same again.

I’ve decided that today is going to be Full Auto Day here at Snowflakes in Hell. Today, our posts will be dedicated to one of the most influential inventions of the 20th century: the machine gun. I’ll have lots of video, pics, and commentary. Fun for the whole family. Posts will come out about once an hour, and I’ll wrap up the day with a post about The Hughes Amendment, why it sucks, and why we really have to figure out a way to get rid of it.

Those of you with RSS feeds got a preview, because I was an idiot and forgot to check the “Edit Time Stamp” checkbox in Wordpress. I hope you will enjoy.