Piece from the Firearm Blog on the current suppressor questions

And SBR questions, for that matter.

Widener's has a piece on the difference between

open-tip match bullets and hollow points.  If you've never dug into this, basically OTM bullets tend to be very accurate but will not (reliably at least) expand in a soft target, whereas HP bullets will, though some may not be as accurate in your rifle.  So the one for target, the other for hunting, generally.

I wrote about the Garmin Xero a while back,

Widener's did a comparison between it and the new Athlon chronograph.

More new light suppressors

on the market, no automatic-rated but very light and good at sound suppressing, for hunting and target shooting.

I think this is an indication of what the industry sees

when a company like Bersa brings out their own silencer line.

This may be a long-used idea, but I just tried this recently,

 and thought I'd pass it along.

Cleaning the upper receiver of a AR style rifle, after you pull the bolt carrier group and charging handle.  I found a tube brush in a pack of them, having used smaller ones for other things, that's the right diameter for a snug fit in the upper, so I took it, sprayed a cleaner on it, put it in and rotated a couple of times, then sprayed some more and rotated again, then pulled it out and flushed out the interior, and the fouling ran out.  Saved a lot of reaching in with a cloth and scrubbing.

That cleaner is rated as safe for polymers and painted finishes, and seems to work pretty well.

As I said, I'd be amazed if this is anything new, but it was to me, and it works.

Also, I had a suitable piece of brass rod so I threaded one end to fit a chamber brush, bent the other end into a T handle, and used it the same way to clean the chamber/lug area, and it works great.  Do make sure you don't get the lug-cleaning portion into the chamber.  An old-style pistol cleaning rod with a ring end instead of a rotating one, would work just as well.

And in-depth look at Wolf Match Target .22 ammo,

which sounds quite worth the money

Widener's did some looking, prices in 1986

vs. Now.

What's really bad is finding an old ad from the 1960's, prior to 1968, of all the stuff you could buy simply by writing a letter and sending a check to the distributors.  Oh, wow, the stuff...

Just occurred to me, due to a comment on the .300 Blackout,

I ought to mention some bullets for general practice that work nicely and have a good price, the Berry's Plated.  I've used the 200 and 220 grain, and they shoot well.

Outdoor range time today,

heat and all(ah, the sacrifices I make!), which included trying the Federal .300 Blackout 190-grain Subsonic loads.

It took a few rounds to figure out elevation at 200 yards, less drop than my handloads, between higher velocity and that more ballistically efficient bullet shape.  The rifle has a Vortex Strike Eagle scope which has four stadia lines below the center dot, with a vertical arrow at the bottom below the bottom line.  Wound up with the fourth line being on the bullseye got this

Yes, I pulled one high.  Really, that five below is not bad, being about 3 1/2" center to center of the furthest apart.  For subsonic ammo in the last group at the end of a hot day from me, not bad at all.  I'll have to get some more of this, and I wish Federal would market the bullets for handloading.

That's a Birchwood Casey 17.25" Shoot n See target, and I like the things.

About that post on Lee reloading stuff,

right now I've got a Lee .308 loading die set which brought it up, because I needed to adjust the depth of the decapping/expanding pin, and it would not stay in place after that.  Same thing that happened once before: make sure the pin is clean of any lube, same for the collet nut, but no matter how hard you tightened it down, it would not stay.

This included scrubbing them with degreaser, and then using sandpaper to roughen the surfaces, didn't work.

That time before(no, I can't remember what die set, years back) I wound up getting a new pin and nut, made sure they were clean, and that sucker locked down no problem.  So I'll try it again and see what happens.

CMP has announced some more information on the 1897 Winchesters and the converted M14

rifles they'll be selling.

The DoJ is getting a process going to allow some to restore their 2nd Amendment rights after a conviction for a crime.  Which is good.

Lee reloading stuff

I've got a number of Lee casting moulds I've had for years, many bullets have gone downrange from them.  And I've got a number of Lee dies that I've been using for years.  You'll see people who swear by, and at them.

Two things I'll mention.  First, on the dies, they use a collet nut to hold the depriming/neck expanding pin in place.  Which is fine, except that if you have to take that pin out for some reason, it may be damn near impossible to ever get it to stay in place; after you tighten it down, it may slip and won't deprime because  it slid up, and you're not sure if the neck expander is doing its job.  Had that happen a couple of times, only thing that fixed it was to get a new pin and collet nut and install them.

Yes, I considered using threadlocker on them, but if you do actually need to remove it later, that could make it fun.

On the moulds, they used to use a setscrew in the side of one block to lock the bolt that holds the spruecutter in place.  Now there's no setscrew, and every few casts you have to retighten the damn thing.  Lots of fun.  I don't know of they decided 'Good enough', or it saves a few pennies, but I wish they'd stuck with the old system.

Note: if you need the decapping rod/collet nut, they're less expensive from Midway than ordering them direct from Lee.

I was working at a range during the first Trump Presidency, Update

and heard sales referred to as the 'Trump slump'; no, he wasn't perfect, but he was better by far on 2nd Amendment stuff than the Democrats(jeez, can you imagine what it would've been like under President Hillary?).  People were far less worried about being able to buy a gun they wanted, so the pressure was off.

Sales kept up this time, seems like, but there was another slump.  And now, after that NFA ruling...

As for NFA checks, a new data figure that the NSSF is tracking for us, in July of 2026, Texas had 16,977 NFA checks to lead the U.S. market. Florida was second (9,784 checks), then Virginia (7,599), then North Carolina (5,941). Georgia rounded out the top five with 5,463 NFA checks. The total NFA checks for July in 2026 were 130,013, an increase of 108.8 percent from the year before.

People are buying, I suspect both because of that, and "I want this before the mid-terms, just in case."


Update:

Local shop that sells a lot of suppressors and other things has a sign on the suppressor counter, "Until we get something in writing from the .gov, we're still doing it by the old rules.  We don't want to risk our FFL by doing differently until we have it in writing."

Just in case you have nothing else to worry about,

Shooting 101: The Debate Between Point-Shooting and Aimed Fire

By Massad Ayoob, yet.  He's written about this before, worth reading.

Something that made their rifles so expensive,

and there was good reason for it; I knew they had a super lockup for their doubles, but hadn't heard it called the 'rising bite' before.

Beautiful work.

Kim had mention of it in this post.

Have never handled a Rigby, once did have the chance to handle a old Evans double-rifle in .470 Nitro Express, and it would've been mine except for that part about selling the house, and maybe the truck, to pay for it.

The Firearm Blog did a study, number of suppressors

since the end of tax stamps.  Lots of people picking them up.

Free tax stamps mean more transfers, but how many? 231,502 NFA applications were submitted to the ATF in the month of May. 121,117 of those were for Form 4 transfers of silencers. This means that a little more than half of the NFA action right now is just silencers. 233,843 NFA applications were finalized, which exceeds the number submitted. That is another very good signal because it means wait times will likely continue to drop.

Oh yes, this is good.  Now they need to make them a straight 'fill out a 4473' instead of all the crap paperwork to keep track of the peasants.

A while back I wrote a bit about some new(ish) Federal .300 Blackout 190-grain subsonic (added data)

ammo I tried.  Quite accurate at 30 yards, but definitely not subsonic.  Then, when I tried it at longer range, it wasn't anywhere near where my other subsonic landed.  Well, yesterday had the chance to go to the outdoor range(Shooting as God intended, outside and not quite melting).

50 yards, first three held on the center target

Three rounds about touching, center and about 3" below POA, just about identical to my handloads.  
And no, I have no idea why I couldn't see where they were hitting before.  Second three on lower left using the first stadia line for aiming, just about dead on.  Considering it's been a long time since any rifle work, and another excuse or two, not bad at all.

So I moved to a 100 yard target, used previously on another rifle/cartridge.  Target was the lower left, first round was with that first stadia line to aim, in that oval.

Second was fired using the second stadia line, 6" high.  

And no I have no idea why I couldn't spot the impacts the last time I fired this stuff.  Put this down to brain trouble, my excuse at least.

Velocities
1089

1081.4

1061.4

1079.8

1079.2

Average 1078.2, standard deviation 9.1fps.  This is from a new box from the original, I'd say whatever caused that first one to be supersonic was dealt with.  Or I messed up my counts/settings.  Ah well, good reason to do it again.

Checking notes, with handloads using the Hornady Sub-X bullet, my aiming point at 100 yards was using the second stadia line, which put it 4" low at 100.  So this appears to be a much flatter trajectory with that Federal Fusion Tip Bullet.  I need to try these two side by side on a day when it's not as hot and my various body parts are not telling me "Time, you need to put it all away now."

Added: all I can think of is the last time I was using a 6" target at 100 yards, the backing board had lots of holes, if I'd used the second stadia line I'd have been off the paper.
That being said I'm sure(I know, famous last words) I tried it with the first line as well.

In any case, here's how they shot today.  And if you're wondering why I didn't fire more, see above reference to temperature, and throw in warnings from the PT to not push it.  I was also having a problem with the rest bag, and not shooting my best with that added in.  So, next time.

Oh, it was one of those moments...

Normal day at work, then:
"I've got a problem with this, I just bought it at the gun show, it's fired a couple  of times but mostly you can work the action and it won't."

Look it over, AR15 type, on the inside of the dust cover it has '300 AAC' printed.  And no, he didn't know how to lock the bolt open.  Did that, looked it over, ".300 Blackout?"

"Yes."  Hands me a magazine with some .223 in it.  Part of me freezes up, then "There's the problem, these are .223."

"I was told you could use these in it?"

"NO, you cannot."  Discussion follows, including getting a round of .300 and showing him the differences, followed by "If you get one of these to fire it won't hit anything you aim at, but at least no damage.  If this was a .223, and you managed to chamber a .300 round in it, it would blow the gun up."

"Oh."  Pause.  Little more discussion, then off he went to get some suitable ammo, being given a strong warning to "Take all this .223 ammo and put it separate, do NOT let them get mixed together.  Ever."

No, I didn't think to ask what idiot told him he could switch between ammo.  

Lord, this stuff does surprise you at times.

I have a rule about neat new/old firearms:

if it involves having to buy dies and brass to start loading a new cartridge(for me), I ain't doing it.  I've had a whole pile of cartridges I've loaded over time, including forming brass for some of them, and I don't really want to start that with another one.

It doesn't mean I can't read about something like this and think "Hmmm..."