Archive for the ‘Guns’ Category

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Random gun crankery.

Friday, March 13th, 2026

I feel like I am unobservant. Especially since I own stock in Ruger.

But I did not know, until today, that Beretta was making a hostile takeover bid for Ruger. I think this might be great for my stock price, but I would very much regret seeing another independent gun maker become part of a larger conglomerate. On the gripping hand, there are probably worse companies that could buy Ruger…

Speaking of stock:

Smith & Wesson posted net sales of $135.7 million for Q3 fiscal 2026, revenue up 17.1% year over year, with margins improving for the third consecutive quarter. The official release dropped on March 5.

And speaking of S&W, I got a press release today: Lena Miculek has returned to Smith and Wesson as their newest “ambassador”. I find this interesting, as she was previously with Sig Sauer, and was the front person for their ROSE program. I did know that she had left Sig a few months ago, so I guess this is the proverbial other shoe dropping.

This came across a mailing list I’m on, and I wanted to bookmark it: I may need this at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Shoot House Rules For Life

I will say that this falls more into the “relationship advice” category than “gun crankery”, but it seems sound to me.

Posted in Bookmarks, Guns, Ruger, Smith and Wesson | 1 Comment »

Short random gun crankery.

Monday, March 2nd, 2026

The Range in South Austin is involved in an ugly legal dispute.

Grant Shaw, co-founder of The Range at Austin, says his business partner Alessandro Bosco and others are intentionally tanking the enterprise to buy it back cheap, minus debts and investors. The accusation is false, according to the company’s largest creditor, and the lawsuit is an attempt to put off what it says is “inevitable.”

…

Shaw is going to court today to try to block a foreclosure sale of the 52,000-square-foot business and property along Interstate 35 in South Austin.
In a nearly 400-page court filing, he maps out the alleged “scheme” perpetrated by his former colleagues, which involves derailing an effort to refinance a longstanding debt while positioning a third-party to swoop in, foreclose and take over.
“Those are all untrue statements and desperate attempts to avoid foreclosure,” said Thomas Sansone, owner of the limited partnership TASAN, which had millions in equity in the company and Range Collection LLC, the company now tasked with collecting his debt. Sansone and both companies are named in the lawsuit.
Sansone, who is also Shaw’s former father-in-law, says the company owes him about $10 million from years of investments, capital calls and bailouts. He was described by another former investor as a “lifeline” for Shaw and the business. Sansone said he took on the bank loan when it came due years ago but hasn’t been repaid.

Fact I did not know, but find interesting:

Shaw and Bosco built another company together called SB Tactical, which produces controversial arm braces for guns. The braces can help turn a pistol into a rifle and the company fought the U.S. government to continue selling them. SB Tactical has been wildly successful and helped fuel other ventures like The Range.

I go to The Range from time to time. I’ve never shot there, and in terms of new guns, there’s very little there for me. But I do like the Collectors Firearms inside The Range.

In other news…

“Wild LI geezer built basement shooting range and staggering gun lab — just steps from Chaminade High School: DA”

Much of this story is hysterical, ignorant, or both. But this jumped out at me:

The probe launched in January 2025, after Chou was flagged as an alleged frequent online buyer of gun parts from multiple retailers — purchasing roughly 112 firearm-related components over the course of the prior year, according to prosecutors.

“Flagged”?

Sounds to me like credit card companies are reporting online purchases of firearms accessories to law enforcement. Might be something to keep in mind. Perhaps make your purchases in cash at gun shows, if you can.

I also wonder if this is just a New York thing. For some reason, I have it my head that credit card companies aren’t allowed to do this in Texas, but don’t ask me for a citation to the specific law or regulation.

Posted in Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Relevant to my interests.

Wednesday, February 11th, 2026

I have my share of issues with The Firearm Blog. But one thing they’ve been doing that I do like is “Small Business Spotlight”. Yesterday’s entry pushed my buttons:

The Armed Papist.

The Armed Papist is dedicated to promoting responsible gun ownership through the lens of Catholic teaching, upholding the sanctity of life, peace, and justice. Guided by the principles of the Catholic faith, seeking to educate individuals and communities on the ethical and moral responsibilities of firearm use, fostering a culture of safety, respect for human dignity, and the common good. Through comprehensive education, spiritual reflection, and community engagement, aimed to empower individuals to make informed, conscientious decisions that contribute to peace and uphold the values of love and protection for all of God’s creation.

As everyone knows, Bob, I already have my own official trainer. But Rick Barrett looks interesting as heck, and it seems like he’s up near Waco, which isn’t too far for me. I think I’d like to spend some time hanging out and talking with him.

And there’s a lot of good resources on his site about how Catholic social teaching interacts with the idea of self-defense. I think this site is worth a bookmark.

Posted in Bagatelle, Bookmarks, Guns, Religion | Comments Closed

Going fishing.

Saturday, February 7th, 2026

I started the post months ago, but couldn’t do anything with it before now because of image uploading issues and Bluehost’s refusal to assist with those.

Bluehost upgraded my WordPress instance for this blog a few days ago, and image uploading seems to be working slightly better, so I think I can post this now and see what happens.

My intent when I started this was to dangle some stinky old bait in the water to see if a specific person took the bait.

Jump goes here.

(more…)

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Ruger, Winchester | Comments Closed

Gun news.

Friday, February 6th, 2026

I think this is big news, but I’m having trouble finding any coverage of it outside of one news story, and a linked article in that story.

Big Rock Sports, LLC has filed for bankruptcy.

Big Rock is a major distributor of firearms and other outdoor gear. And the bankruptcy filing is a Chapter 7 – total liquidation – not a more common Chapter 11 reorganization.

The filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina so far have not detailed the reasons for the move to liquidate, but show the company was facing a wide range of lawsuits from suppliers, property owners and other business partners.

According to the articles, Big Rock has over $100 million in outstanding liabilities, and assets “between $10 million and $50 million”.

I registered for a PACER account in an attempt to find the filing, but they say it takes seven to ten days after registration to activate my search privileges. Plus I’ll have to pay a fee to get a copy of the filing once I can search for it. If I am able to find it somewhere, I’ll link it here.

The SGB article lists some of the creditors. I don’t see any of the major gun companies listed there, but the stories don’t provide a complete list of creditors.

Interesting fact: Big Rock had a Canadian subsidiary. “Had” is the operative word, as that was liquidated in December of 2025.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 21, 2026.

Wednesday, January 21st, 2026

This isn’t quite an obit, but Mike the Musicologist sent it to me a few days ago, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to use it: a tribute to Phil Schreier. (Previously.)

His character was unlike anyone I’ve ever known. Smart, funny and stubborn. Whatever standard an organization or the world imposed, his own was higher. He was a public face of NRA, not because he sought fame and fortune; the latter is extremely unlikely as an NRA employee of 36 years. He took that role on as not only his vocation but as a responsibility. Most of NRA’s millions of members will never meet an NRA staffer, one of the dedicated people that goes to work for them every day, so you better leave a good impression. Phil had the Cal Ripken attitude: No matter what’s going on in your life, you stay and sign the last baseball. At the thousands of gun shows he attended, and the dozens of NRA Annual Meetings, he would always make time to answer a question or shake a hand, much to his own peril when seeking to reach the bathroom on time. He once told me that if you’re on TV enough, you’ll never make it to the men’s room alone again. There was simply no quit in him.

Rob Hirst, drummer for Midnight Oil.

As I’ve observed before, if our Earth isn’t turning, our ability to dance will be the smallest of our possible problems. And if our beds are burning and we want to sleep…maybe get a hotel room? Or a fire extinguisher?

Posted in Guns, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Random gun (and other) crankery.

Saturday, January 10th, 2026

One of my Christmas presents to myself was to take a gun off layaway at my local dealer.

I’m not ready to show it off yet. I want Mike to see it first, and I’ve warned him that his eyes are going to roll so hard they may pop out of his head. Let me just say that this gun combines 1.5 of this blogger’s obsessions. More later on.

One of my other Christmas presents to myself was a replacement for Project e. While it was (and still is, to some extent) a fine machine, the CPU and memory are quite limited. You can’t even get an Ubuntu distro for it any longer, as far as I can tell. It still powers on, but I was getting a lot of fan noise out of it, too. I think it is time for it to go into retirement.

The new machine is a Lenovo ThinkPad P15S – I believe this is a gen 2, with an i7-10510U processor and a discrete NVIDA T500 GPU. It is a lot larger (I’d say about twice the size) than Proect e, but several times more powerful. This was a Discount Electronics purchase when they were looking to dump inventory a few weeks ago, and I upgraded the SSD and RAM when I ordered it. (I also got six months free financing.)

Other than replacing Project e, I wanted to get a personal computer for myself. I’ve been doing a lot (well, pretty much all) of my personal stuff on my work laptop, and that doesn’t seem like a good situation for obvious reasons. I want to start moving files and personal stuff off the work laptop and onto this one. Of course, that’s more difficult than you might think, because Cisco, as a security measure, has locked down all the corporate machines so you can no longer use any removable media. I think I can still copy stuff to the cloud.

Right now, the new device has Windows 11 Pro on it. I’m keeping it there for two reasons:

1) I also signed up, at the end of the year, for the Certified Ethical Hacker certification from Colorado State. They specify Mac or Windows for the coursework. I didn’t want to try running the courseware on my work Mac (and possibly running into infosec issues) so I figured I’d get a dedicated Windows laptop for the course, and once I finish the cert, install some flavor of LINUX on it.

2) I also need to do my taxes this year. I think there may be a LINUX tax software package, but I’ve never used it. I can get the H&R Block tax software, which I prefer, for Windows. The past few years, I’ve installed it on my work Mac, but I think I’m going to stop doing that this year.

Why not just get a new personal Mac instead? I’m waiting for the M5 Pro Max laptops. Once those come out, and as long as everything holds together, I plan to purchase a fully blown and stoked M5 Pro Max (or whatever Apple calls it) for personal use. Project L (the Lenovo) will then become a dedicated security research machine.

I’ve messed around a little with the Windows version of hashcat so far, and I think I’m getting pretty good performance with that. I also want to see how it performs ripping DVDs with Handbrake. I do expect performance improvements in both these areas when I move Project L to UNIX.

I also want to go back to messing around more with SDR. I have one of those TV tuner based SDR kits, but I haven’t done anything with it because I felt my existing machines were too slow. Now that I have something a bit more modern than 2009…

And speaking of SDR, I also want to pick back up experimenting with Bluetooth. Though, again, I think that’s going to have to wait for UNIX. It is also going to have to wait for me to figure out what the current state of Bluetooth probing devices is: the Ubertooth One is out of production and deprecated. Just based on a preliminary Google search it looks like the state of the art has shifted to higher-end SDR devices.

Going back to guns for a minute, I do have a “gun” coming from Amazon on Monday. I’ll blog that when I can, as it answers the question: what happens to a dream deferred?

And I have a huge backlog of gun books to blog, once I can get picture uploads to work again.

Busier than a one-armed man in a calf-milking contest, indeed. I’m just hoping to hold everything together.

Posted in Apple, Bluetooth, Books, Christmas, Geek, Guns, Project L, project_e, Radio, SDR | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 2, 2026.

Friday, January 2nd, 2026

Back on the train.

Philip Schreier, director of the NRA Museums, passed away on Monday.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Schreier, but by all accounts he was a swell guy.

Throughout his career, Phil was a trusted and respected voice within the firearms community. He became the public face of the NRA through countless television appearances and public engagements, always warmly received wherever he went. Phil was not only an ambassador for the NRA but also a devoted advocate for the Second Amendment.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell, former senator from Colorado.

Irreverent, blunt and independent, the rough-hewed Mr. Campbell was a fiscal conservative and a social liberal who favored gun rights and abortion rights, billed himself as the champion of the average voter and refused to be bound by party lines. He switched allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans in 1995.

…

From 1960 to 1964, Mr. Campbell studied Japanese and judo at a university in Japan. He won 48 of 50 tournament matches, earned a gold medal at the Pan American Games in 1963 and joined the United States judo team at the 1964 Olympics. (He tore a ligament, lost his first match and retired from active competition, ranked fourth in the world.)

Isiah Whitlock Jr., actor. Other credits include “Cocaine Bear”, “Law and Order”, “L&O: Criminal Intent”, “L&O: SVU”, and “Lightyear”.

Cecilia Giménez. You probably don’t recognize the name, but you may recognize this:

The group called her “a great painting enthusiast” and acknowledged Mrs. Giménez’s efforts to restore the nearly century-old fresco of Jesus. “Because of the poor state of conservation, Cecilia, with the best intentions, decided to repaint over the work,” it said.
But when Mrs. Giménez’s handiwork came to light in August 2012, the authorities initially suspected that the church had suffered an act of vandalism. The delicate misery on the face of Christ en route to the crucifixion had been replaced by a misshapen head.

…

But her artistic mishap created an economic boon for Borja, a town of 5,000 inhabitants.
Tourists flocked to see her efforts. Less than three years later, more than 150,000 visitors from Japan, Brazil, the United States and elsewhere had made a trip to Borja, paying one euro, about $1.20, to view her work under a protective clear cover.
Local officials told The Times in 2014 that the tourism spike had stabilized the town’s restaurant industry and helped the area’s institutions. The nearby Museo de la Colegiata, which houses religious medieval art, experienced a rise in annual visits to 70,000, from 7,000. Vineyards in the region squabbled over the rights to put Mrs. Giménez’s Christ on their labels. In 2016, two Americans even staged an opera about the affair in the same church.

Louis V. Gerstner, former IBM CEO.

Posted in Art, Guns, Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | 2 Comments »

Merry Christmas!

Thursday, December 25th, 2025

The great and good Pat Cadigan posts her favorite Christmas story every year (Merry Christmas, Pat!) so I’m going to post my favorite Christmas joke. This year’s version comes from the Straight Dope Message Board: my favorite joke is at the very top, but there are some other great ones in there too.

Mike and I were making a tour of gun stores over the past weekend. We went into the Gun Connection in Taylor (endorsed: this is the kind of funky store that I like) and they were playing this.

My kind of Christmas music.

Merry Christmas, one and all. Special regards to Jimmy McNulty, T Migratorious, Pigpen51, Lawrence, and Borepatch.

And I’m pretty sure I’ve used this song before, but not this version.

Posted in Christmas, Endorsements, Guns | 2 Comments »

The Spirit of Christmas 4.

Monday, December 22nd, 2025

A 2025 RevolverGuy Christmas Story.

It isn’t required, and it isn’t a Christmas story, but it might help put some of the “theology” here in context if you also read “Homecoming Day” from earlier this year as well.

Posted in Christmas, Guns | Comments Closed

Happy Thanksgiving! Have some short random gun crankery!

Thursday, November 27th, 2025

Over at the GT Distributors web site, they have a historical look at two very rare revolvers.

Two rare Smith and Western revolvers. That’s not a typo.

On a totally unrelated note, the latest video in the Smith and Wesson “Tales From the Vault” series is up: “Project Spitfire 9mm Carbine”.

Posted in Guns, Smith and Wesson | 1 Comment »

You’re smoking in a no-smoking zone, you tax-fattened hyena!

Thursday, November 13th, 2025

And I’m looking forward to full on flames.

Headline on the front page of the NYPost:

Dem rep’s $1.2 million DC home target of DOJ mortgage fraud criminal referral

We’re almost getting to the point where “politician charged with mortgage fraud” is the new “car bomb explodes in Beirut”.

But this one is special.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) was hit with a federal criminal referral for alleged mortgage and tax fraud related to his purchase of a $1.2 million home in Washington, DC, that he claimed as a primary residence, The Post has confirmed.

You may remember Eric Swalwell for such hits as “banging a Chinese spy”:

In January 2023, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) kicked Swalwell off the House Intelligence Committee, following reports three years prior that a suspected Chinese spy had infiltrated the congressman’s campaign — and got close to him.
Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, was a purported honeytrap who entered the US from China as a college student in 2011 — but allegedly spent the next four years wooing state and federal lawmakers to potentially obtain sensitive government intelligence.
At least two mayors of midwestern US cities had a romantic or sexual relationship with her, a US intelligence official and former elected official told Axios in 2020.

You may also remember Rep. Swalwell for threatening to use nuclear weapons against gun owners.

If Rep. Swalwell is convicted (and as much as I despise the man, he is still entitled to the presumption of innocence) he will, of course, lose all rights to own guns. I assume this includes any access he may have to nuclear weapons.

Posted in Guns, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Short random gun crankery.

Friday, November 7th, 2025

I’ve had this in my back pocket for a couple of days, waiting to use it. As you know, Bob, I am an unabashed and unrepentant Smith and Wesson fanboy.

Honesty compels me to link to this post from the Revolver Guy blog:

“S&W 432 Ultimate Carry Ti Review: No Thanks!”

It is about 5,800 words, but I think you can see where the author is going from the headline.

As I said, most of this article was written before I experienced the big malfunctions. As such, the tenor of the general description of the 432 UC Ti may be at odds with my overarching opinion, which is: I do NOT recommend this revolver for life-and-death purposes. The first one failed within 600-ish rounds. S&W was offered the opportunity to redeem itself, and the second gun failed within 200 rounds.

I actually own one of these revolvers, as well as one of the earlier Lipsey’s Ultimate Carry guns in .38 Special. I haven’t had a chance to go to the range and give them a through workout yet, but my extended Christmas/end of the year vacation is coming soon. I’m also not carrying either until I have a chance to put rounds downrange: for right now, I’m relying on either a Beretta in .25 ACP or one of my old-school J-frames.

Greg Ellifritz also linked to this review in his Weekend Knowledge Dump for this week, and he has some additional comments. I would encourage you to read, not just his comments, but the whole Weekend Knowledge Dump. There’s some additional fun stuff in it: I would also recommend “DesertTech MDRx – Dubious Gun, Horrific Customer Service” and “The Open-Bolt MACs”. Or, as the article by Dr. Dabbs puts it: “The Open-Bolt MACs: The Worst of Absolutely Everything”.

Posted in Guns, Smith and Wesson | Comments Closed

Obit watch: special dying media edition.

Tuesday, November 4th, 2025

A reliable source has informed me that the NRA is ending publication of Shooting Illustrated and America’s First Freedom. I have not found a link for this, and when I checked the NRA website earlier today, I still had a choice of these magazines with my membership.

The same source also informs me that the NRA is switching to quarterly print publication for American Rifleman and American Hunter. Again, I have no link for this. I’ve checked the NRA’s website and done a lazy Google search. But this is not a person prone to misinformation or falsehood, so I trust them implicitly. If I find a link, I will update here.

I think this is just another example of what Roy Huntington is talking about: the gun, ammo, and gun accessory manufacturers are dropping print advertising in favor of the Internet, and the print market just isn’t sustainable any longer. Of course, nobody’s considered what’s going to happen when the big companies that effectively control the Internet start hating guns again.

Edited to add: link from Bearing Arms, dated October 30th. It doesn’t name the magazines, but my source tells me they are named in the linked Cam and Company interview.

Link from News2A, also dated October 30th.

On a happier note, “Teen Vogue” has snuffed it. More or less.

“Teen Vogue”, the print publication, actually ceased publishing in 2017, but it continued on as a website under the Condé Nast brand until yesterday. Condé Nast is folding the website into the regular “Vogue” website. I’ve seen one report that says 75% of TV’s staff was fired, “including its entire politics team”.

I would be happier about this if they had snuffed regular ‘Vogue”, too, but you take your victories where you find them.

And, finally, Gannett announced today that they are changing the name of the company. The new name? USA Today Company.

Gannett’s name change will take effect on Nov. 18, when the company’s stock will switch to trading under the ticker symbol TDAY on the New York Stock Exchange.

Posted in Guns, Media, Obits | 2 Comments »

Random gun crankery, some filler.

Thursday, October 30th, 2025

Smith and Wesson has a new series on their YouTube channel: “Tales From the Vault”, with Jerry Miculek.

The first episode dropped Tuesday, and it covers the Smith and Wesson Model 76. You may remember the Model 76 from various movies, such as…

As we like to say around here, “If the future was bad, CHeston was there.”

There was a gentleman at one of the S&WCA symposiums some years ago who had a display of Model 76s. As I recall, at the time, you could get a transferable one for about $8K. I checked GunBroker, and it looks like they are going for $18K to $20K now.

My brother sent me an interesting note yesterday: the revived Marlin (a division of Ruger) introduced a new lever gun in their Trapper series. Short barrel, compact, probably quick handling…and chambered in best mil.

I have not seen any lever guns chambered in 10mm until now, but it does kind of make sense. (There may have been some custom or semi-custom low production 10mm lever guns that I don’t know about.) Heck, I don’t even feel like I have a use case for a pistol-caliber carbine, and I find the 10mm Trapper an interesting proposition. I bet this would be a great gun for hog hunting.

I promised a couple of weeks ago to post photos of my old 1911 with the Battleship Texas grips.

I do think they look nice. Of course, I kept the grips that came with the gun, in case I ever want to restore it back to the original config. The gunsmith did have to do some hand fitting on these grips, so I’m not sure they’d go on any other gun.

Preview of coming attractions. As my regular readers know, I am a bore. Either a small bore or a big bore, depending. In this case, I am a small bore.

But: I am also PC.

Over at RevolverGuy.Com, Mike Wood has a nice piece up about the demise of the print editions of Guns and American Handgunner (previously), which includes reviews of several FMG Publications books. Some of those I’ve written about here. There’s also an appearance in the comments by Editor Roy Huntington, who explains the economics: “With the loss of print advertising, it was simply not sustainable to keep the presses rolling.”

RevolverGuy also has an after-action review of Revolver Fest 2025. I wanted to mention that because I thought this, from the comments, was interesting:

We had one gun (out of 7) go down (frozen action) at the Diamondback booth, and one gun that occasionally had a light strike that couldn’t be traced back to ammo. I heard from a number of shooters who experienced problems with multiple guns at S&W (sights, barrel clocking, frozen action, etc). The best place to shoot S&Ws was actually over at the Lipsey’s booth, where the guns were reportedly doing well. Maybe Lipsey’s did some inspections, cleaning and maintenance on the samples they brought?

So was this:

Smith & Wesson didn’t show up with anything all that interesting. I shot a 3-inch, Performance Center Carry Comp Model 19, which was neat, but a variation on an old theme. Smith also brought out their .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum 1854 rifles. I somewhat regret not shooting them, but I did handle them and they looked sharp. Frankly, Smith seemed a tad tone-deaf to the nature of the event; also on their table was a Bodyguard 2.0, a Shield X, and an AR. I get it: get your products in front of customers any way you can, but also, read the room, Smith!

As your resident unabashed Smith and Wesson fanboy: guys, do better, please.

Posted in 1911, Guns, Media, Ruger, Smith and Wesson | 1 Comment »

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