A buddy recently sent a link my way regarding the movement to ban lead from ammunition, or at least ammunition used in hunting. You can find that here.

Interesting topic, and one that allows me to remove my gun nut hat for a minute and spectate.

The basic premise is that lead is bad for human consumption so therefore we must remove it from the environment in every manner possible. So, a group wants to ban lead bullets for hunting.

This actually makes a bit of sense, and it’s already been done to some extent. There are federal regulations stating that you may not use lead shot when hunting birds which have existed, I think, and do not quote me on this, from 1991. The only real problem with this is that steel shot is more expensive than lead and it’s less dense which means a change in pellet size to gain the same effectiveness in killing.

I have no qualms with that law. I might think it’s silly, or pointless, but it’s not worth my time defending using lead shot for bird hunting.

Now, for every other kind of hunting, things get interesting. In the above linked article they want hunters to drop lead for, and I quote “copper, bismuth, tungsten, steel, tin, and other alloys”. That right there folks is why I want to sit back and watch the firework show between the anti-hunting group and the anti-gun group.

See, lead works real well as a bullet because it’s cheap, and because it’s soft. Well, soft as far as metals go. When lead meets flesh at high velocities it deforms and makes all manner of nasty wounds. Bonus points if you put a dimple in the front that makes it a hollow point as it will deform even more, mushroom out, and create a greater wound channel.

Now, taking the above list of metals, let’s run through them. Copper is used to encase lead bullets because it’s harder than lead and it doesn’t leave as much crap in our barrels. That thin little copper jacket is all we need. If we made our bullets of out copper they’d be harder than lead and lack in that whole deformity/damage issue.

Bismuth? I can’t speak to it’s properties — not familiar enough with it and I’ll admit that.

Tungsten and steel, now there’s a metal I know about when it comes to bullets and which makes the issue really interesting. They’re used fairly often in bullets, just not in bullets used for hunting. They are key components in armor piercing bullets!

Yes, folks, for years the anti-gun crowd has jumped up and down on their soap box that we don’t need armor piercing bullets because our right to keep and bear arms only applies to hunting, yet, the only bullets suitable to the environmental crowd are armor piercing bullets.

Yes, I skipped the other metals — the fact of the matter is that lead wins when it comes to bullets because its dense and because it’s soft. No other metal is as soft as lead. Feel free to bite down on random metal objects if you think that I’m wrong.

Of course, no pissing match will ensue between the groups. One will work to get anything but lead using in hunting and the other will work to prevent anything other than lead in bullet compositions.

The end result will be a blow to gun owners and freedom in general if it succeeeds, but it’s fun to point out the logical disconnect between the groups until then.

Recently Tamara dropped a gun post on her blog that presented a piece that I had no idea ever existed.

The Smith and Wesson 53-2

She sure does take some purdy pictures. Good writing too, so go click the link and enjoy.

Now, if there was ever a piece that lives up to the gun grabber hype about “cop killers” and “armor piercing guns” that didn’t look like the ones they try and demonize, I’d have to say that this would be the one.

A knecked down .357 magnum cartridge pushing a .22 caliber 40 grain bullet in excess of 2000fps?! Crikey! With a reasonably hard bullet design I’d have no problems accepting that this could push right through the typical soft body armor worn by police officers intended to defend against handguns.

It’s out of production, and has been for a long time, but even if it were still out there in vast numbers I’d have a hard time believing that the anti-gun crowd would actually target it. It just looks too much like a gun your grandpa would have owned.

I caught Larry from FBMG Inc mentioning a rear peep sight on an AK made by Krebs Custom so I thought I’d check them out. It’d been a while.

What I found blew my friggen mind, and it’s probably not the same part that Larry was talking about. The Krebs Custom AK Rear Sight Receiver Rail System.

Sha-zahm!

Looks like you smack the old retaining pin out of your rear leaf sight, drop this puppy in, rotate it down over your dust plate and lock it into the tensioned button at the back. At disasembly time you disengage from the rear and rotate it up.

Fucking genius.

Gives you a damned good increase on the sight radius and gives you an M16A2 style peep sight in the back.

It’s not released yet, but, providing that they keep the cost to $100 or less I’m in without any hesitation. While I’m only sumbitch I ever met that can use AK sights quite naturally I’m still very much in favor of M16A2 style peep sights.

Besides, dropping my 2x Tru-Glo (can it, it was on sale) onto anything but an AK seems absurd. This would handle it quite nicely I expect.

Not sure if it would fly

So, the other day I’m out running some slugs through a .410 with an old buddy of mine trying to get some reasonable accuracy out of them at 100 yards. When we had run through the very few .410 shells I had in my collection we switched to his stuff which was some kind of metal cased .410 stuff probably of Russian origin.

That’s when it hit me: Why can’t you take the Saiga in .410 and rechamber it into .45 Long Colt? That’d be kind of sweet, and probably a damned smight better for this task, and many others, than what we’re doing right now, and…

I woke up.

Is it weird that I think of stuff like this in my dreams? Don’t answer that.

The problem, at least the first one that most people would note, with putting .45LC into an autoloader is that it’s a rimmed case. This makes it less than optimal but the Saiga shotguns seem to deal with this just fine. There’s also the M1 Carbine that deals with the .30 Carbine rimmed case.

So, presuming that that won’t be a problem in the .410 Saiga what else could there be?

Well, getting a rifled barrel chambered for .45LC. That would be costly. If they were actually produced commercially I’d expect them to be about $300, but they’re not, so it’s anybody’s guess.

Magazines would also be a problem. Perhaps the Saiga .410 mags could be used, perhaps not. You’d definately want a greater capacity than they currently offer here in the US for it to be useful.

If, somehow, it were all made to work what would it get you?

Well, the brass cased .45LC should be more readily available than brass cased .410 slug ammo. A brass case means more heat can be removed from the chamber upon ejection. Slight advantage there, I guess.

Now a .410 slug is about 86 grains in the 1800fps area. A .45LC should be closer to 250 grains running far slower, but still above 1000fps I guess.

Can you same home defensive carbine? I thought you could.

Big heavy bullet, not going that fast, and coming off of a Kalishanakov platform.

Meh, the thought entertained me for a while. As I flush it out more and more it becomes less and less viable.

However, there’s got to be some kind of market for this. As I said, as I flesh this out I realize that there are actual projects going down this path. One of them is the 45 Bushmaster and in the comments there The Heartless Libertarian opines:

Do I hear a bid for .45 LC?

Guess I’m not the only one that thinks the old cartridge still has some modern uses.

It also might be marketable in the same vein as the 300 Whisper sans that whole downrange accuracy and efficient bullet coefficient thing.

I guess this would be more of a big bore version of the M1 Carbine than anything else, and if sold that way, it might have some appeal.