Photo by lyle58

It’s been a long while since I posted on the blog here, but I’ve been working hard for the past couple of months on the Armory.  I realized this morning that I hadn’t said anything about it over here, so I wanted to make a brief post highlighting the work I’ve been doing on it.  While StoppingPower.Info has been around for almost three (3) years now, the majority of people find their way here via the videos that we have posted over the years.   What started out as wiki site migrated to a more “blog” like format, and finally we have what we run now.  That being said, it always felt like the firearms (and assorted other equipment) was either (a) tacked on like an afterthought or (b) too hard to sift through the videos and reviews to find.  I wanted to fix all that to better aggregate all the really good firearms and display them in a manner that made sense to me (and hopefully is useful to others).

Goals of the Armory

1. Organize firearms, ammunition, and manufacturers into an easy to search and use web site.
2. Provide a consistent look and aggregate  information that is usually “all over the place” on the net.
3. Cross reference the ammunition with the firearms, so that it is easy to search for all firearms that use .45 ACP (for example).

To that end, three major sections have been developed currently:

Handguns - the many varieties of handguns provide a nice place to start and I really think it’s nice to be able to cross reference them by caliber.  You can find all the Semiautomatics you want, or just look at the Derringers.

Caliber - Caliber instead of “ammunition” because I believe that’s a more accurate term.   Where possible, we’ve added a CAD drawing of the case dimensions (of course check your reloading guides).

Manufacturers - If you want to see all the Glocks or Rugers currently indexed, then this is your place.  With time, this section will grow as we add in more specific manufacturer information.l

If you have any suggestions for the Armory, just let me know at frank@stoppingpower.info.

- Frank

Click here to view the embedded video.

Got an email from Kahr Arms recently announcing their new kahrtalk.com forum to discuss Kahr and Auto-Ordance firearms. It’s nice to see a company actively engaging their users in this way.  I know of a good number of ruger forums, but not many(any?) that seem to come from Ruger itself.

There is a dedicated forum for each model Kahr pistol, and for each model Auto-Ordnance pistol or rifle.  There are also discussion areas for holsters and gear, ammunition, competitions, gunsmithing, firearms for sale, and much much more.  This is your one stop shop for everything related to Kahr and Auto-Ordnance firearms.

The forums themselves look like they’re actually starting to get some traction, with over 100 posts already logged in the “general discussion” section.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Their description is telling, as the water surely added the “pow” to the gun.

It runs off of a compressed air line and a standard wall outlet. After firing a few “dry” rounds, he proceeded to shoot off a few (ok a LOT) of ping pong balls filled with water. These things might not weight a lot, but they are moving FAST. A sheet of drywall was no match for them, and even particle board failed spectacularly when faced by a 1″ sphere of water.

For comparison, here’s the type of hole we produced when we fired a 12 gauge shotgun slug through the same particle board (OSB) walls.

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They define klunker as:

KLUNKER refers to a handgun from any manufacturer that you wish to trade in for the $200.00 payment. Gun must be operational and free from cracks in frame or other key components. KLUNKER must be a semi-auto pistol 9mm or larger, or revolver of .38 caliber or larger. SIG SAUER reserves the right to reject any firearm submitted as a KLUNKER that does not meet our criteria. Rejected firearms will be returned to sender. Please allow six (6) to eight (8) weeks for delivery of your check. This offer cannot be combined with any other program or offer.

Wouldn’t be worth it to me, and I’d have to wonder how much it’d be worth it to anyone in general.  Frankly, all my guns (which span lifetimes from a couple of years to about 40 years) are in good condition.  That’s what taking care of your gun actually means!  Of course maybe there’s a huge amount of .38 Specials out there based on the fact that I still can’t find any ammo for my GP 100.

Offer ends December 4, 2009.

Here’s an example of .223 vs a Bullet Test Tube

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Check out the rest of our shooting videos an easy comparison of round effects vs different targets…

As for the story…well title is apt, but I enjoyed it.  Frankly, I went and saw GI Joe the other day when my brother was in town.   We weren’t looking for quality drama, just some good old fashioned explosions.  He though it was ok, I thought it blew.  I really wanted to like it…I really did.  But about the time I realized that Marlon Wayans was actually a main character (who is funny, but oh boy, at least hold the gun right), I knew it was a downhill effort.  The video (which I first saw on Larry Correia’s blog) below is actually proally the best thing about a new GI Joe movie…

Click here to view the embedded video.

If I haven’t mentioned…the movie blew.  On the other hand, we did both make it out to see District 9, which was extremely worth it.  Much, much better story and maybe more importantly great explosions.  I think they may have even threw in some acting…

Click here to view the embedded video.

By far one of the better sci-fi flicks I’ve seen lately.

Sportsman’s Warehouse, Inc. announced today that it has successfully exited from bankruptcy, becoming one of the very few national retailers to do so in recent memory and defying the recent trend of high-profile retailers not able to make the transition. Sportsman’s ability to emerge is a result of the tremendous support it received from its vendors, creditors and dedicated employees.

When the local store closed it really bit a lot of us who shoot down here regularly.  Frankly, it’s quite a step down from SW to Wal-mart (not that Wal-mart is bad, it’s just not the same).  Combined with the overall ammo shortage, the amount of time I’ve spent on the range recently has gone down fairly drastically.

Still, I hope they can get their business together, because I really do think they offer something not on the market currently — a store focused on hunting and fishing that’s widely available.  Sure, Cabela’s has been around for years (and I really like them too!), but they’re not widely available and didn’t field nearly as many stores as SW did.  Of course maybe that’s the problem?  SW has focused on the small markets that Cabela’s doesn’t really service, whereas Cabela’s are nearly all located in a fairly large metropolitan region (with the Nebraska store being a good exception, but hey they started there).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seriously though…an AR-15 for home defense?  While I’m as pro-gun as the next guy, this is in the fairly stupid category.  I think we’ll stick with the classics…

Click here to view the embedded video.