Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Guns: My Hero

When Arthur Winters saw two armed robbers terrorizing his neighborhood, he did the only thing he could think of: He asked his wife to bring him his AK-47.

"I had to get it to protect my family and the neighbors and all that," Winters said.
I want to live next door to that man. Unfortunately they only make them like that in Texas.

To bring my gun news up to date, I took my AR-15 and he took his newly reconditioned Mauser Broomhandle. Once again, I forgot to bring stuff. In this case it was targets and the milspec zeroing instructions for an AR-15. Fortunately my brother remembered targets and I remembered most of the zeroing instructions. Unfortunately "most" wasn't enough.

I came out better in the functional testing. The broomhandle wasn't especially reliable and more importantly the front sight started to walk off the barrel. The solder job didn't hold. My brother was quite annoyed. My AR fed flawless from all magazines and I didn't have any hickups.

Unfortunately I got the zeroing wrong so I'll have to redo it. My gun's rear sight isn't exactly milspec. It is set up in "half-clicks" not "clicks." So while I was shooting at 25 meters and was one click up from bottom, I should have been two clicks up. If I had been smart, I would have noticed where the "Z" was on the dial for the "zero" location. I also need to make sure the carry handle is tightened down well. When I got home one of the screws was loose. Either it was never tight or it had walked. Which means my sights might be anywhere. Oh well I'll have fun zeroing it again later.

Cleaning the gun wasn't the horror story I had always heard. There was a lot less debris than in a typical rimfire rifle for instance. Hopefully that doesn't mean I missed a lot of debris somewhere.

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