Get It On

 

Get it on, well yes, quite, but what exactly. A Burris Fastfire 3 RDS onto a Glock 45 Compact Crossfire. Should be easy, right? Just buy Glock's cheap adapter kit and away you go, but not so fast. Everything goes swimmingly well until you notice the slide adapter plate's canted up at an angle towards the rear sight as opposed to flush with the slide.

Bad Error

Bad error. Why would this be? Two reasons. 1: You over-torqued the screws affixing adapter to slide. 2: The screws which you've handily set aside from the gun's original slide plate, the same screws which Burris tells you in its wisdom to fasten sight to slide, are too long. They protrude from the bottom of the adapter plate onto the slide and raise the thing up. Useless.

So what's the fix. Burris tells you to go to Burris and buy their special, proprietary lock washers, which will act as a kind of shim to lift the offending screw (s, there's two) by about a millimeter and hence flush with the adapter plate. Huh. Why not include M3 .50 x 7 in the adapter kit, you tightwad cash heads.

Solution? Go to the hardware store, buy some fresh M3 .50 x 8 screws and some toothed lock washers, it'll cost around 2 bucks if that. Then take them home, file or clip off the teeth of the washers. Then fix the adapter plate to the slide using Glock's provided 6 mm length screws, being careful not to overtorque, "hand tight" says the manual. 

This Locktite accomplished, fix the sight to the adapter/slide by way of custom washers. And there you go, one RDS topped pistol ready to hit the range with all of its compact fury. Will it perform? Let's find out. More anon.

#2A,

LSP

Sunday Pistol

 

You're not allowed to own a pistol in England unless you're a criminal or a cop, but you can in Texas. You see, free citizens are able to defend themselves whereas serf-slaves cannot. That in mind, here's a Sunday pistol.

Just a little 9, a Glock 45 Compact Crossover Gen 5. Note improvements to magazine well and slide and I tell you, this little barker fits well in the hand. An improvement on Gen 4? Hey, all you Glock experts can argue it out but I'd say yes.

This handy pistol comes with a Burris Fastfire 3 red dot, which I'll set up tomorrow. Then let's see how this diminutive beast performs. Fast, I'd wager. That in mind, I favor .45s with all their explosive power.

Still, I like this little fella.

#2A,

LSP

You Plinker!

Some say that a dinner of roast quail and venison sausage, rifle to table, helps you shoot better the next day at the range. I drove out into the Texan countryside with my philisophical pal, GWB, to find out.

We took along a couple of scoped Ruger .22s, an American and a 10/22, representing the bolt and the semi side of the rimfire world. And a couple of pistols, a Sig and a Glock, chambered for 9mm and .45. But what about the quail and venison theory of marksmanship, how did that stand up, in the real world?

If a metal kettle, a plastic Folgers container, steel plates and turkey, at 75 and 100 yards, are anything to go by, the theory holds true. Down went the opposition, with a vengeance. I claim the best pistol shot of the day, hitting the kettle at 75 yards with the Glock. Sorry, kettle, you lose. I never much liked you anyway.

Shoot over, GWB wanted to check out the land behind the range for what he calls "native Texan grasses." That excitement over, I spotted a piece of metal, shining in the hot spring sun. "Look at that, you see it, glinting in the sun?" I asked my Wittgensteinian ally, "Maybe it's a piece of UFO debris. Let's have a look."

It wasn't a bit of space junk, annoyingly, just an old air conditioner that someone had dumped. And as I reflected on the higher implications of that, a long rattlesnake uncoiled silently from beneath the rusting metal and made its way, gliding and deadly, into a nearby pipe. Moral of the story?

Quail and venison help you shoot. This is now settled science. Also, don't be a dimwit when you go for a nature ramble in Texas, it's not Devon, or the Cotswolds. Take a gun, you might need it, and be careful poking around in space junk, who knows what killers might lurk within.

Shoot straight,

LSP

Get a New Gun?

What Gun?

I'm thinking of getting a new gun, probably a bolt .308 or .30-06 but it's confusing because there's a lot of rifles out there in the right price range and they all seem good. Like the Ruger American or the new offering by Savage; very affordable. That said, I'd prefer something that wasn't black plastic. Maybe I should look for a used rifle, one with a wood stock?

Mighty Ballistics

Then there's pistols. I fired a friend's XD .45 the other day and really liked it, so now I want a new pistol. But it's like rifles -- which one? Something chambered for 9mm, perhaps a 4th Gen Glock, or the CZ SP-01 (steel frame)? Then there's SIGs and XDs. Tricky.

I think they're all good, and they are, but feel free to advise. I want to get several. 2014 will be the Year of the Gun.

Shoot straight,

LSP