Tag Archives: 9mm

Active Response Training Close Quarters Gunfighting Class AAR

The last class I took with Greg Ellifritz was his knife class in 2019, which I absolutely loved. In fact, it convinced me to carry a knife on me as much as possible, which was something of a lifestyle change. This positive experience made me really want to take his Active Response Training ECQG class. Well, COVID got in the way and delayed things, but the stars finally lined up, and I was able to enroll in the class.

What did I think? Read on.

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Sometimes you do beat those odds

As mentioned in passing in other posts, I bought a Smith & Wesson R8 revolver about a year ago that I have basically been using for messing around with OSR and low-light shooting. Reloading 357 Magnum (at 38 Special pressures) is a good excuse to use leftover powder that I am uninterested in stocking longterm (Bullseye, Unique, etc.). Nothing wrong with that, but as any reloader can tell you, swapping out calibers on a progressive press is typically an annoying affair. I also find that 9mm moonclips typically work much better than 357/38 moonclips due to cartridge length. You can see where this is going: I like the R8 in 357 Magnum, but I’d like it a lot better if it were in 9mm.

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FPF Training Practical Revolver Class AAR

When I got my bonus last year, I decided that my “splurge” would be some quality revolvers. My only experience with revolvers before that was a Taurus 94, and let me say, the Taurus 94 is not a great revolver. I knew there was better stuff on the market, and I wanted to get some guns to scratch some various competitive (and tactical?) itches.

The problem with guns is that buying them does not give you proficiency. You’ve got to earn that through hard work. Given my lack of experience with the revolver platform, I really wanted some good hands-on mentoring. When I saw that FPF Training was offering a revolver class, I jumped on it. Did I like it? Read on.

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BUL trigger pull measurements from my own personal collection

During a reddit thread discussion, I took the time to measure the trigger pull weights of various BUL pistols in my collection, which I felt like I should repost on the blog. All measurements were taken with a Wheeler trigger pull gauge, and they were repeatable across multiple pulls:

  • Bullesteros (9mm, gen1 with steel grip): 1.6lbs
  • SAS II TAC SC (9mm, 2021): 3.5lbs (PGW tuned)
  • SAS II TAC Commander (9mm, 2021): 3lbs (Atlas trigger installed, probably some trigger work by someone)
  • SAS II TAC 5 (9mm, 2022): 3lbs
  • SAS II TAC Government Carry (45 Auto, 2020 or 2021): 3.25lbs
  • M-5 Government (45 Auto, gen1): 4lbs
  • M-5 Ultra-X (45 Auto) #1: 3lbs (!)
  • M-5 Ultra-X (45 Auto) #2: 3lbs (!)
  • M-5 SC (9mm, gen1): 3.5lbs (PGW tuned)
  • M-5 Commander (45 Auto, gen1, full compensator): 2.6lbs
  • BUL Storm: SA: 4.5lbs; DA: > 8lbs
  • BUL Storm Compact: – SA: 4lbs; DA: > 8lbs
  • Cherokee (gen1): SA: 4.5lbs; DA: – > 8lbs
  • Cherokee Compact (gen2): SA: 6.1lbs; DA: – > 8lbs
  • BUL Impact (9mm): SA: 4.5lbs; DA: – > 8lbs

As you can see, the SAS II guns are uniformly pretty good. The M-5s vary a lot more due to what I assume is tinkering by their former owners and/or worn in parts. For what it’s worth, my personal favorite trigger is in the Ultra-X (short, light, smooth) followed by the TAC 5. The Bullesteros has a fantastic trigger that is way too light – I need more practice with it.

The Tanfoglio-derived pistols (Impact, Cherokee, Storm) have uniformly average triggers, with the Cherokee gen2 having an oddly bad single-action pull. I almost wrote that they all had bad triggers, but years of shooting the P320 X5 Legion, SAS II, and even tuned up revolvers have made me forget these pull weights are roughly on par with a factory CZ-75. The trigger pulls tended to be smooth, so they didn’t feel awful, but they were certainly heavier than I was used to.

The reality is that a (single action) trigger pull weight under 4lbs is fine for competition use, albeit I prefer something in the 2.5lb-3lb range when practical.

An Ode to the P320, and a Journey of Pistols

My first centerfire handgun was a 9mm Sig P226R with the DAK trigger system. The DAK trigger is not really as horrible as some people make it out to be – for a bedroom safe gun, it provides some margin for sleepy bump in the night wake-ups – but I will say that it’s also not the trigger I’d want to be shooting USPSA with. It’s a long pull, with a heavy (albeit shorter) reset.

I bought a whole bunch of Israeli handguns after that. They were cheap surplus, they functioned pretty well (after a spring change, sometimes), and they did have a cool factor associated with them. I even bought a S&W SW9VE, which was my first ever striker-fired handgun. The SW9VE isn’t the garbage everyone thinks it is, especially after you get a trigger job done to it, but I have to admit that it was average at best, and would be mediocre by any of today’s standards.

But just before MD’s AWB came into effect, I bought a Glock 17 gen 3. I had no intention whatsoever of using this pistol as a pistol – I actually paid the FFL at the time to register it as an SBR so I could mess around with pistol chassises. Frankly, I am still looking for one that I think measures up. But what I also discovered was that the Glock 17 was not a terrible gun. It was simple, reliable, had a much better trigger than my SW9VE, and magazines were not as wallet-busting as the SW9VE magazines. This, along with a bit of Blade-Tech gear, was my entry into the world of training and action shooting. I took a holster draw class, and I was hooked from then on.

After that, I got heavily into Glocks and Polymer80 pistols. Doubly so when I took a class with Modern Samurai Project and found out how much more I enjoyed shooting optics-equipped pistols. I procured a couple of Glock 34s and shot them in Production and SSP, while a pair of optics-equipped slides kept me going in Carry Optics. It worked out well!

However, I found myself starting to wonder if there was more I could do with striker-fired guns. The Glock platform just seemed to have a performance ceiling, and while more skill always beats better gear, better gear can help you better use what skill you have. This was happening about when Sig released the P320 X5 Legion. Looking at it, it checked all the boxes – heavier, better trigger, modular, and with a very substantial aftermarket. When a local person advertised theirs at a reasonable price, I went for it. It was everything I was hoping it would be, right out of the box. I bought a second one a few months later, and then recently a third (AXG Scorpion) and fourth (FCU build on a TXG grip and full-sized slide with threaded barrel).

What I love about the P320s is that they give me options without much compromise. AXG grip with threaded barrel upper? No problem. Threaded barrel upper on an X5 polymer grip? Just an FCU swap away. If I decide I really want to go with a compact-style or even subcompact-style grip, it’s $50-$60 to make that happen if I don’t already have one. All of them are optics-ready. All of them take the same magazines (size limitations not withstanding). Sig is only the manufacturer that seems to be doing modular pistols “right”, despite any number of them (Ruger American, IWI Masada, etc.) being nominally available. This is the sort of thing that makes me gravitate towards the P365 now that Maryland has opened the gates to concealed carry by normal folk – one gun could be like four different ones with slide and frame swaps.

I’m not making a play that the P320X5L is the end-all be-all of Carry Optics and Production division handguns. It’s not. It has a lot of really good competition from the Shadow 2 OR, Walther Q5 Match SF, Beretta 92X Performance, and so on. I shoot (Bul) 2011s from time to time when I can get away with SAO guns. But, from the perspective of “here is a handgun that I cannot hit the limits of, yet”, the P320 X5 Legion has been very good to me. If Sig ever brought back modular hammer-fired guns ala the P250, but with fantastic DA/SA triggers, I’d certainly love to add a couple of those FCUs and slides to my inventory.

SASP Equipment Series: PCCs

Continuing on with my series of SASP equipment articles, let’s talk PCC.

PCCs are a nice transition gun for athletes who started on rimfire rifles, but want to move into a new division as they get older. They are heavier and have a bit more recoil, but are generally not too overpowering even for 10-12 year-olds.

Read on for some thoughts.

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Armanov Ammo Checker Bundle 3-in-1 Review (9mm)

You’ll recall from my SHOT Show 2022 coverage that I spent a fair bit of time talking to the gents at Armanov. Armanov is a small business based out of Slovenia that makes a variety of useful reloading equipment, along with some miscellaneous magazine extensions and grips. It appears most of their products are CNC machined from aluminum, which is de rigeur these days.

I purchased the “Ammo Checker Bundle 3-in-1” in 9mm. This is a “hundo gauge”, as the cool kids say, which is a case gauge that lets you check 100 loaded cartridges of 9mm at a time. This may seem excessive to some people, but for the competition shooting crowd who are sometimes reloading 1000+ rounds a month, it’s a fast and easy way to check the quality of your reloads and ensure that they are at least nominally match ready (assuming your powder dropped, anyways).

What did I think? Read on.

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9mm AR Upgrades Part 2

While I recently spent a lot of time and money upgrading my multi-gun competition rifle to a high standard, I didn’t forget about my competition PCC. Whenever I go out and shoot Steel Challenge, I like to do the “two guns” thing and shoot both a PCC and a pistol. I figure most of my investment is time, and I may as well shoot as much as possible while I’m at the match.

The experience with my competition PCC hasn’t been smooth. In fact, I’d probably say it has been the most finicky ARs I’ve ever built. I spent a lot of time just getting my basic functionality working, and then I later had a very unfortunate catastrophic failure when a bullet got stuck in the rifling during manual extraction. But I persevered through those problems, and wound up with a reliable, accurate PCC. Now I’m on the next step: increasing performance.

When Taccom announced their Delayed Blowback Recoil System (DBRS) a couple years ago, I was intrigued, and to be honest, a little skeptical. Using magnets to delay bolt movement sounded hard to believe. But I saw some positive reviews of it, and decided to give it a try, in conjunction with Taccom’s Extreme Short Stroke Bolt (ESSB).

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SpartanCore Charon (Vehicle-Borne Tactics) AAR

I always enjoy training with new instructors. Everyone’s got a different take on subject matter, and even small tweaks to technique can lead to big gains over time. Thus, when I saw that SpartanCore was offering a new vehicle tactics class (“Charon”), I was excited not only to get in some training in and around vehicles, but to also learn more about SpartanCore and the people involved.

How did it go? Read on!

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