Jonnin

Ok, so I am a hippocrit ... lets skip that and I will give some thoughts. I bought one, though I *HATE* striker fire design guns. The small size and left hand friendly design sold me in spite of the style. The nano has a nice simple design: I was able to swap the mag release to left handed inside about 10 min, and it only took that long because there were no instructions to be found anywhere yet. The swapped release works just as well as it did right handed so I think I got it right. Takedown is turning a flathead screw 90 degrees, and putting the slide back on locks it without having to mess with the flathead again. It has a decocker but you need a tool to use it (ink pen, nail, toothpick, something like that). The good stuff: its accurate, I hit a 1 inch target multiple times at about 10 yards. Its reliable, eating several cheap ammos and my handloads without complaint. Its tiny: its not noticably bigger than my sig p238 cocked, slightly bigger but not that anyone could feel or tell. Its heavy and has a locked breech design, so the recoil is very mild for its size. The recoil seemed better directed/controlled than either the taurus 709 or a glock 17c, though it is stout compared to a large gun like a beretta 92. It will fire with the mag out, a big plus for a low cap gun. The bad: the trigger and it is worse than even I expected. I would say it is a long reset with a good 6 pound pull and gritty. Its not the trigger proper: when the slide is off its smooth and light. But whatever the trigger is pulling on in the slide to work the striker needs to be polished badly (and it may self polish, remember this is a 1 day old gun with 75 rounds tops through it, shot before being cleaned and lubed which may also help). It has no slide release so you must have 2 working hands to reload it. There are no extended magazines for it yet, and the grip is 3 fingers for my mid to small sized hands, so a large man might find it too small. I expect the extended mags to come out for it, though, most pistols in this size have them appear sooner or later. All in all I give it a B+ with potential to become an A if the trigger loosens up (or can be encouraged to do so). Any questions, ask, its not the most detailed review but I am willing to tell you whatever you want to know. I would highly recommend this gun for anyone who likes the LC9 or Kel-tech 380 or other such long trigger pocket guns, or a glock user who wants to slim down sometimes. I have not tried it with any defense ammo yet, so feeding of JHP ammo is unknown. LRN and FMJ so far are both 100%. It does not have poly rifling. I saw a question.. The finish is new and difficult to talk about. It is all black and seems to be of a good quality, but if it flakes off in a few weeks I will tell you for sure. I did not see any wear from the range trip except on the inside of the slide, where the slide rubs across the top of the next bullet in the magazine.

to clarify the 1100 I have isnt a special model, just the old bird gun model based off the A5 design. Flawless apart from not liking a couple of the rock bottom cheapest ammo. I have never seen nor tested a competition special edition 1100.

welcome, sorry for you loss.

Banned, but we don't have kids. Probably would not have a cow if the wife found & displayed somthing with him on it but it would take a pretty cool decoration to get into our house or yard. I would not ban it for small children, as they simply cannot understand that, but time they were 8, maybe 10 or so he would be gone.

Instead of filler you could just use a weaker powder to fill the case, or get a different bullet, maybe one with a crimp ring, if those are causing problems. Filler adds a step and slows you down, if nothing else, it seems like a last resort fix to me (what happens to the powder's burn rate and all if they get shaken up and the powder/food is all mixed together? )

The guy with the saiga at our matches does fine, though he does not always use it, the biggest problem with it is ammo management (slugs vs birdshot), its difficult to swap between them. The guys who clean up (time wise) have those shove in sticks that load 4 or 5 in about 1/2 a second, or the high cap guys who finish the smaller stages without reloading. I do not pay much attention to what division others are in, I am stuck in open anyway. The sports are unfortunately unfriendly to a lot of carry gun choices, my 380 is triple bad (low capacity, cannot knock over the steel plat targets, pocket carry/draw not allowed) so practicing defense is totally out for me.

a semi auto shotgun with a high capacity (10 or so), light recoil (get a pad?), and easy to load design are what you need. I use an 1100 with an improved loading ramp, extended mag tube, soft butt plate, and gunsmithed to cycle very light loads (there is a hole in the barrel you can have expanded which helps cycle weak ammo). It was used and came with a red dot sight, though that is more of an aggravation than a help (it moves us to open category where the expensive toys are being used, but our gear isnt that hot). Pump guns are ok and work, with extended mags and all the rest, but its a rare shooter who can keep up with a pump gun. A magazine fed saiga is also a winner, but much more pricy than a regular gun.

You also have to watch the safety rules. Some of the rule sets used force you to use a safety if the gun has one, which adds time to your score, making a no-safety striker design a little faster. You do not want anything with less than 10 shots, 15 + per mag is better. The gun does not have to be accurate, but it does have to be reliable. You are mostly shooting huge targets at close range, once in a while you might have to hit a pie plate at more than 20 yards but its rare. If you can point shoot the gun well, that really helps, or front sight style. I see about equal numbers of 9mm, 40, and 45. I rarely see anything else, once in a while a 10mm or a 357 sig or other oddball is used.

A shame, and right at christmas to boot, the poor kids. I have gone without a holster before, but only with DA+safety style guns. I cannot imagine doing it with a striker fired design and would probably question going cocked & locked that way.

yea a file to shape an edge then a couple of the rough stones to clean it up. No need to take it much past that if you are using it on brush and so on, the sharper you make it, the faster you will dull it, it just needs to be "lawnmower" sharp. You can even do a one sided edge if you like, for yard work.

sorry, I tried to keep it short, simple & easy to understand. But everyone keeps asking complex questions, makes it hard to keep it light.

Its the other way around. Light, fast movers dump energy (mostly made up from velocity!) rapidly, which loweres their momentum (measure of how hard an object is to stop...) rapidly. Heavy rounds retain momentum better (more of it is stored in the mass part) and have less velocity to lose. The only easy way I know of to test this is if you are a reloader... you could do something like compare 9mm or 357 with the lightest and heaviest bullets with similar energy values, the heavy one would go through more stuff. Or just think about this: would you rather catch a baseball thrown at 100 mph or a bowling ball moving along the ground at 15 mph? (reall sloppy approximations but a 5 oz baseball @ 100 is around 3k units and a 15 pounder at 15 is around 3k units -- its not foot pounds, since I left it in pounds an mph instead of slugs & fps, so its rough but Im lazy).

I have yet to see a gun with an open chamber fire, or an unloaded one, or even one that was loaded and no one touched either 1) the trigger or 2) something directly connected to the firing pin (such as a hammer, or slide, or certain safety/decockers). Whatever happened here, you can bet either the trigger or the slide/firingpin/hammer were involved in it --- while it was pointed at the victim, and after a failure to open the chamber to see if it was loaded. These things just do not happen any other way in modern handguns. I simply do not buy into any of the stories that claim it happened any other way... though I will keep an open mind if someone explains how to repeat the event in a controlled test.

Left field. This is where bullet design comes into play, as well as velocity, and other stuff. A 223 soft point will just about vaporize in some situations, a .22 LR FMJ is very likely to be in 1 piece. A 44 mag hollow point will break into 2-3 pieces, a 44 mag FMJ will probably remain intact under most impacts with soft targets. Its more of a factor of the jacket, hollow point or not (the expanding designs rip and bend the copper and lead, sometimes breakng up), shape (a long thin 223 hitting something sideways will cut itself in half, a .45 acp that is closer to a sphere will not, even if you evened out the energy levels). There are many variables here too but thick, well bonded jackets hold a well made bullet together, thin cheap jackets will just peel off, lead will shatter or tear or flatten depending on what it hit, how hard, and at what angle, how hard/pure the lead is, and more. Size of the bullet matters but its just one of many, many things that affect this.

A startup shotgun is cheap, and pumps are difficult in 3-gun anyway, it puts you at a slight disadvantage over the autos. If you do not get a saiga mag fed shotgun or one of those "load 5 with a widget" systems put in, you can do well for under $300 total. A tube extension, recoil pad, possibly have a smith work on it to cycle weak loads, and maybe a tweak to the loading ramp and its good enough for a long time. I doubt I have $200 total in my rem 1100. These sports will teach you some skills --- how to swap weapons fast, reload fast, shoot fast, but the rules and scenarios are not good training for real life, as you will take a "rambo" approach to every fight, charging down the guns no matter how many. I would go with low expectations on how much practical training you will get. If you want training, take a good class. If you want fun, go to a sport. If you approach a real fight against 5+ armed enemy the way these sports do, I give you a 1 in 50 chance of walking out, tops. You can show up cold but best to know at least how much ammo will be required, how long it may take, how much it costs to play, and so on. Bullseye may be impractical, but I can assure you that if you get all 10 ring shots in the rapid fire phase, you could put that to some practical use in a fight --- and if the target is bigger and closer, so much the better. Not the most recommended training, perhaps, but hitting what you aim at every shot has value.

You can't hunt with it AS A SHOTGUN for birds(?)***. Im sure its fine for deer or whatever when using 45's etc, the issue was using it as a 410 bird gun. Sorry if that was unclear! (*** is there a limit on shotgun rounds for small game? I do not know!). I know it comes with plugs but have heard that some wardens do not consider that to be enough. Is the SA trigger so bad? I picked on up at a show but I cannot remember the SA pull. I know the DA is awful, but then again, most are.

Its really annoying -- I refuse to make a facebook account, I will not have anything to do with it, but a lot of sites assume you have one. The idea is kind of nice but I do not trust them with my name or image -- just this past week they let their private photos out to the public in yet another failure of their low quality security measures. I suppose I could make a bogus account, but I havent bothered with that.

They have a tatical style stock and look for it now, by the way. Which is about like hanging a flashlight on a rail, bipod, and drilling holes in the grip of your ruger single 6, its .... beyond words really.

I think its very attractive, and would make an interesting first shotgun/rifle for a kid. But apart from the cosmetic look of it, I have no use for it. You cannot hunt with it --- it cannot be plugged to hold 3 in any way that satisfies the game wardens. Its not exaclty skeet friendly, though one might get used to it and do well if you can operate a long DA pull. At the best, to me, its a nifty but low capacity carbine/toy. If I had an infinite budget, I would get one just because of how it looks, but I can't pay that price for something to look at, I can click on the picture once in a while for free.

99% of that princess nonsense is from a certain well known brainwashing cartoon company that pushes liberal values at kids, starts with a D and ends with a Y. Well, values isnt really the right word....

expansion is related to lots of things, velocity is 1. The softness/hardness of the bullet/lead, velocity, bullet design, jacket thickness, material of the target, and more. As noted, paper does not generally expand anything, even the softest lead from a rifle like 223 does not expand much from paper (though it may tumble after the impact). If you want to study expansion, shoot into gel/jello/wet paper/etc in a thick jug. You can buy faster moving .45 ammo; it will have a lighter grain bullet weight pushed as high as 1200 fps for the really light ones in +p loads. The buffalo bore 185 grain for example is billed at 1180 FPS.

I fail to see how the BG is a woman's gun. The trigger is long and heavy, the gun is light and with a blowback design that makes the recoil stout for its small size, and the laser sight adds a level of confusion in a situation that requires a practiced shooter (which many women are but talking about the stereotypical babe here). Im not sure what would be best for a weak person (woman or not) but the blowback micro 380s wouldnt be it. Seems like a strange comment. Most woment I know have smallish 9mms, same as most men.

There are a lot of different types of competitions, from active paramilitary type stuff (3 gun or offensive pistol (IDPA)) to bulls-eye (high accuracy) or precision rifle, skeet and other shotgun games, and more. The things to look at to get started are how much you are willing to spend (a set of bullseye pistols for a serious shooter can be over 4k!, and 3 gun isnt cheap at 1-2k for gear and guns) while IDPA just uses any old 9mm pistol ($250 if you want to be cheap at it) or shotgun stuff can be done with a $200 gun. Another thing to look at is how physically active you want to be vs just shooting; if you love to run relay races, 3 gun or IDPA is for you, if you like to just shoot, precision rifle or bullseye or the like may be your sport. You also can learn a lot by reading the official rules of the sport and dedicated forums/topics for the sports, to get a feel for what is done. *** I give IDPA a hard time because the rules prevent me from using my carry gun in my carry configuration to practice defending myself. Its FUN, but it is also frustrating with all the restrictions (caliber, holster, belt, ammo, and more are regulated to the nth degree) combined with courses where you charge down a mob in the most ramboish, unrealistic scenarios possible.

Honestly, given the indecently low prices dealers offer (buying from you) on new/like new guns and the number of dealers who are quite willing to sell you a flaky gun, often under a "no returns as is" policy for used guns, I would not have had a problem with him keeping mum about the issues --- thats part of the "game" that gun trading has become. I do not condone it, but I would not condemn it either, not after some of my experiences this past decade. Edit-- worded better

Most rifles have only been shot a "few" times. Rifle ammo is expensive, the recoil on hunting guns is tiresome after a few shots, finding a long range place to go can be a hassle, and so on. Most "hunting" (whatever that means, it usually means a beat up bolt action) rifles probably have 100 or less rounds through them, a box here and there to sight them in and a shot or two at game each year. You made a great choice, it will serve you well and you don't have to stress over any dings you get in the field. And a 3-9 will take you from 20 yards to over 300 easily, also a nice perk. Good luck on your hunt!