Jonnin

I would like to say that I think SW has done an awesome job.  The clearly stressed employees juggle the phone, the firearms, the reloading, the ammo, etc and patiently answer the same questions over and over for however many hours per day, week after week.  They were one of the first to put limits in place which has really helped to spread the supply around.  They have not price gouged.    Again, though the first week or 2 of the crisis were a bit hectic, still an awesome job! 

humans have instincts too; when I was younger I remember it being recommended to toss the kid in the pool early to pick up this survival skill. 

  Supposedly I get ~2500 FPS from my 223 pistol (plr-16) with a 55 grain.  I do not have a chrono so that is just what others claim, but in the neighborhood.  A 22 mag out of a rifle  is right at 2k fps or less for a lighter bullet load (10+ grains lighter, 30 and 40 grain loads).   Even if you grain of salt the 2500 and call it 2250, you have a 15 grain weight advantage and 250 fps advantage over magnums in a rifle --- and you have that in a smaller gun than the 22 mag rifle, and one that holds more rounds, etc.    The AK pistol is far superior as a weapons platform.  I got the 223 as a toy, really. 

And now a moment of silence to consider what YOUR healthcare might be like if run by the government.  I would compare it to private health care --- an extreme example being steve jobs, who was kept alive for a very, very long time with a worse form of cancer than hugo had.

its all in how you word it, though.    If the national guard,  DHS and so on are doing their jobs at all, they *have* "planned" (as in, considered scenarios) for widespread rioting and domestic issues.  They *have* to do this, it is part of the job, same as running scenarios to handle domestic terrorists in an urban environment.    Change the word planned to mean "in the process of executing in the near future" and no, I do not believe that.   The day may come, but its not here.

I am not sure who is recommending it for what, but as already said, its like soaking your gun in acid, mild or not, that can't be a good idea to do every week after shooting it.   Use a light oil to clean your gun most of the time; rem oil, clp, hoppes, etc.  If you need something else for a special deep cleaning, consider what you use carefully. 

IMHO the 2 rounds are traded 1 for 1 unless great discrepency in quality.   -- if the hunting stuff is brass cased and you reload, its worth significantly more.  I would say 3 steel to 1 brass.

Whole lotta nothing in the news on this so far. 

  Sorry was thinking auto-pistols too, the LCP comes in purple I think, for example?    Um what about purple custom grips, by the way?  Then you don't need to ruin the gun to give it a color splash.  http://www.tombstonegrips.com/images/gunpix/rg23_amethyst.jpg would be pretty classy IMHO

My suggestion is to buy the gun you like and get it purpled somewhere.  Annodized is harder to find, but every town has a couple of people that do cerakote or gunkote or whatever all the other new finishs that come in 256 colors are called.     Most of the colored guns for girls are not on my top 50 list of purchases.  Yea, its pink, but it has a 30 pound trigger and shoots a goofy cartridge too, usually.   I mean, if you/she WANTS one of the 3 brands that provide a colored gun, awesome, but if you want something else, get the right gun first and foremost, and color it to suit your needs.  Wife has had 2 of her pistols pinked (one for fun and one because it was in need of a new finish), and she loves the result.   edit: a thought: if you are going to refinish one, maybe roll that cost around by buying a nice but used gun, maybe with... finish damage... 

  My theroy is the theory of all of it.  Meaning, its a sum of a variety of issues.   long time but casual shooters who never stockpiled ammo suddenly have realized the sense in doing so. + prepping has become mainstream. + jerks are buying ammo by the case to make a quick buck on ebay. + new gun owners are buying ammo for their new guns + opressive govt has long time preppers and shooters buying too ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ no ammo

  9mm builds pressure very fast as you seat the bullet deeper.  If you seat to the same depth, you can use the same charge for the same material of bullet.  For example a 115 grain copper JHP and a 115 grain FMJ seated the same depth can share the same charge.  Depth is not related to OAL directly however, and that is the catch!  If you are using a powder charge for a similar but different bullet, what you said is exactly what to do: start with a very light charge and work it up slowly and carefully.     All that to say it will likely be close.  That is, it is *very* likely that a working load for a JHP exists between the min/max loads for a FMJ of the same material and weight; they absolutely should overlap unless using the hottest powder you can find where .25 grain is the difference between max/min or something crazy like that.   Which means you can do as you are doing, pick the closest match in the load data to what you have, back off for safety, and go from there.

It should not need to be trimmed.  Should and does are not the same word -- its always possible that you could get some that was out of spec, but not likely.   You should not need case length gauges for general purpose reloading.  If its a type of brass that needs to be trimmed (necked cases) then you should have a trimmer for it.  The trimmer will produce cases that are shorter than or at most the length set on the trimmer.  If you set the trimmer up correctly (and some, like lee drill trimmers, do not need any effort here), then, you don't need a case gauge to double check your work (at most a micrometer will do).

The 'perfect' 'collection' would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and would house one of a kind guns (famous due to owner, like ossama's AK or booth's derringer etc) and ultra rare / pristine examples of antiques.     My personal collection is mostly made of shootable guns and heading more and more away from dustcatchers every year.    The practical stuff is easy --- AR or AK or similar, pump or auto shotgun, big caliber rifle or 2 (bolt, lever, modern bmg, whatever), quality 22 rifle, quality 22 pistol, quality defense handguns  (9, 40, etc) (at least one tiny framed easy to conceal), quality major caliber handgun (44 mag, 10mm, etc).     The fun stuff is personal, for me that is mostly midgrade target handguns.  I would love to have a ton more money sunk into the fun stuff --- would love top end accuracy guns in both pistol and rifle platforms --- but I make do here with what I can afford without buying stuff that is beyond my skill level (Lets face it, I would love a $5k 1911 but you could hand me every gun at camp perry and I still would not earn a cent shooting any of them at any competition ever!). 

my, look at that hose drawn by the word hose....

but probably 75% of that 20% of america were already gun owners, not first timers.   When you are buying your 27th rifle, its no longer really arming america unless you plan to be charitable when the end of the world comes (?).    There are a ton of new gun owners, yes, but of all those sold, how many were bought to flip (AR flipping), how many bought by panicky gun nuts, etc?  Its not possible to say, but just looking on the boards here, every day someone here got a new toy.

the nickel stuff I reload and leave it; I have had terrible luck using it more than 1-2 times before it has a problem.  Its not as stretchy as brass and in short order your primer hole is too big and your mouth will split.  It works great those first couple of goes, and possibly a few more depending on caliber in question.   Most of my brass is brass colored, most of it the darkish color that you get after exposure to air for a decade or so; I do not care to clean it to the point that it looks like gold.  A little of it is reddish high-copper color, and those work just fine.    I use a strong magnet from an old hard drive; it can suck the steel cases out of a pile from 6 inches away and I think it can hold about 30 pounds of highly magnetic steel against gravity.  They don't make them as strong anymore, but if you have a 1990s era disk .... get the magnets out!

  Yes.  My wife was the same, glock became a jam machine for her when she started trying to use it in 3 gun: moving rapidly from target to target she jammed it every time.  You can put some light springs in a glock to assist a shooter with this issue, up to a point.        I actually like the judge with 45LC loads.  Its still not the "best" 45, but its not the most expensive either.  It was reasonably accurate and comfortable for me, and if I needed yet another revolver, it would be considered.

mine came with 2 mags, one reg & a +1 pinky extended.  I need to get a third mag but have not yet. 

today,  525 for $19 @ academy (probably all gone by now though).    The price is only jacked if you buy from scalpers, the big stores are not gouging.  

There are better buys than money to get scrap metal; if you pay attention you can even find it free for the price of picking it up and hauling it off.

I will be the nut I guess, but the inlay versions do not look good to me.  I would have such with no clip, and either a more normal wood handle (that is, one piece per side) or one of the metal handles w/o the inlay at all.  Inlay might be ok if its to show/collect and not use; I have lost interest in buying stuff that is not usable, though I once did and have boxes and boxes of knives to show for it.

  Not really.  It was getting it back together that sucked.

Shotgun, probably.   Ammo for any type of situation, keep it loaded for defense and you can toss in any type of hunting round upon spotting the game if you leave the chamber empty.   223 is mediocre for large game, waporizes wabbits, fails on birds, and while superior for dealing with large numbers of attackers, I have no delusions that I can use it well enough to handle 10+ guys without myself being taken out so meh.  I am a prematurely old computer nerd, not rambo. 

Sort of.    I have 2 SAO "75s": a rami and a kadet.   the bulk of the work was done by CZ-USA but I tore them apart and took a look & polish & tweak at it after they came back.  They did the work because we bought the guns from them; if we had just wanted the work done I would have done it & bought parts.   It looks like all they did was replace parts, from memory I think it was hammer, sear, trigger, and maybe linkage? Seems like a simple buy parts, tear apart, put back together.  It was moderately, but not insanely, difficult to get the parts back in there; there is one annoying spring (isnt there always?) to deal with in the trigger group.   The result is a "glock" type trigger.  That is, its SAO but there is a mushy pretravel that cannot be eliminated because it needs to travel back that far to reset.  If you tweak it down to 1911 type trigger, it won't reset at all.   The pre-travel is pure do-nothign spring and can be staged, again just like a glock.   The trigger is lighter and nicer than the sloppy SA pull of the original DA/SA setup.  My wife uses the kadet for serious .22 shooting, and once she learned to stage the trigger, can shoot a very clean group at 25 yards with it.   I dislike the result for use as a target pistol, but am ok with the way the rami turned out (which is exactly the same thing) as a defense pistol with a comfortable, but not hair, trigger.