Mega Rad Gun Thread

[The Dude]

Bought an assload of magazines because they’re still cheap. Mostly got cheap AR mags, but I also decided to splurge on 3 Wilson Combat 1911 magazines. I’ve been thinking about getting another 1911 because I really love my el cheapo ATI.

I love my Dan Wesson Specialist. They aren't cheap, but they're one of the best buys in 1911s due to their level of quality. Not sure what your price point is, but they're definitely worth looking into. The SIG 1911s are also a good buy if you don't mind non-traditional features like the slide milling and external extractor SIG puts on their 1911s.

If you want a non-kel-tec .308 bullpup, and you want some interesting history and design creds - there's always the K&M M17s (https://www.kmarms.com/) which is a riff on the old bushmaster M17s from way back when. It's a riff on the AR-180 operating system, the old Bushmaster guns went with an AR-style bolt, the new K&M production guns went back to the original design with the trilug.

I like IWI's guns, so I'd go for the Tavor 7 if I were looking for a .308 bullpup. I nearly went with one of the early Tavors before the X95s came stateside when I was shopping for a bullpup 5.56x45mm, but went with the Steyr AUG because I already familiar with them having owned an MSAR clone in the past, and because the AUG was a more seasoned design with a well-respected reputation. But I'm settled on .308/7.62x51mm rifles. Absolutely love my Mk14 and MWS308 and wouldn't trade them for anything else on the market.

 

[RA-5C Vigilante]

I have a soft spot for Steyr. They remind me of the big auto companies in the US in the '80s, making some ok products and relying on name recognition until some guy out of nowhere comes in and wrecks their shit. I got a Steyr C9 which I love, and a Mid-war M95 carbine made in the Steyr werks as well, but i'm more likely to find sasquatch than rounds for that thing at a good price. And frankly im kind of terrified to shoot the thing, it'll probably tear my little bitch shoulder in half shooting it. 8x56R fired in carbine format. Fuck that.

I also got an AR in 6.8 Spc back in January, which while a bitch to find rounds for that as well, feels like i'm shooting the future. And for my home defense, I got my cheapass Chinese ripoff 1887 lever action from a couple of years ago I got for 230 bucks. And some bitches said that having one gun was an overreaction. Now those same people are trying to get one for themselves and I sure as shit don't lend weapons to retards, especially Johnny-come-lately ones.

 

[Prompt Critical]

I got a Steyr C9 which I love, and a Mid-war M95 carbine made in the Steyr werks as well, but i'm more likely to find sasquatch than rounds for that thing at a good price. And frankly im kind of terrified to shoot the thing, it'll probably tear my little bitch shoulder in half shooting it. 8x56R fired in carbine format. Fuck that.

I have a Budapest (FEG) M.95 stutzen carbine and can confirm that they are fairly unpleasant to shoot. Also likely the least accurate bolt action rifle I have ever fired. It's fun though, in the same way that all short-barreled carbines in full powered rifle rounds are - giant muzzle blast, bullet comes flying out and goes... somewhere roughly in the direction you aimed, big hole. The straight pull action is mechanically interesting, although I'm not really convinced it allows you to fire any faster than a normal turn bolt.

Ammo is actually not super hard to find - PPU makes new production, although it's a little expensive (IME about $24 for a box of 20 rounds). In my area, I also occasionally see old pre-WWII Austrian 8x56R packs, which come in little triangular cardboard boxes of 10 rounds on chargers and look like this:

I've bought these within the past year for as low as $10 each. Although like any old surplus ammo, they have a pretty high misfire rate - I think about 1 in 4 of the rounds I've shot of this type failed to fire, and it's always a little uncomfortable when you pull the trigger and nothing happens and then you just have to sit and wait.

The absolute worst thing about the M.95 is the disassembly. The bolt can only be put in or taken out of the receiver when the internal and external camming surfaces are in the open position, but once the bolt is out of the gun, lightly breathing on it will make it collapse into the closed position. Returning it to the open position frequently requires jamming something into the bolt mechanism to hold the two pieces apart (a US dime is the perfect size).

Edit to add: the real unicorn ammo which I have resigned myself to never finding is 8x50R Siamese for my Type 46. I don't think I'll ever be able to shoot that thing unless I take up hand loading in the future.

 

[MrJokerRager]

The well known video of a instructor getting rekt by a UZI's recoil.

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What Metal Gear Solid 5 got right and Battlefield 4 got wrong.

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So a longer barrel means more accuracy.

 

[Thornforg]

What Metal Gear Solid 5 got right and Battlefield 4 got wrong.

So a longer barrel means more accuracy.

Of course if you're mag-dumping (or rather, belt-dumping), your suppressor is going to get stupidly hot and eventually have a catastrophic failure and/or meltdown. But you will never see this outside of these videos. Suppressors do indeed get hot, but as you can see it took nearly 400 rounds before anything major occurred. Use in any normal situation wouldn't lead to any kind of failure (unless you threaded it on wrong, then you're getting baffle strikes all day). MGS5's suppressor system is super jank and BF4's, while much more arcade-y, is actually more realistic unless you're putting one on an LMG (which, for the record, not even the most operator of operators do because there's no point)

As for barrel length and accuracy, you lose more velocity than actual accuracy when shooting from a shorter barrel in the vast majority of cases, and most accuracy loss occurs not from the shorter barrel, but the shooter themselves due to the shorter sight radius. The barrel length itself contributes much less than commonly thought of when it comes to accuracy, barring obvious exceptions. In most cases, the shooter is more responsible for the accuracy (or lack thereof) of modern firearms than the firearm itself.

Also worth pointing out that the M4A1 and M16A4 are two entirely different platforms to begin with, and comparing the two on accuracy based on barrel length is comparing apples to oranges.

 

[The Dude]

Of course if you're mag-dumping (or rather, belt-dumping), your suppressor is going to get stupidly hot and eventually have a catastrophic failure and/or meltdown. But you will never see this outside of these videos. Suppressors do indeed get hot, but as you can see it took nearly 400 rounds before anything major occurred. Use in any normal situation wouldn't lead to any kind of failure (unless you threaded it on wrong, then you're getting baffle strikes all day). MGS5's suppressor system is super jank and BF4's, while much more arcade-y, is actually more realistic unless you're putting one on an LMG (which, for the record, not even the most operator of operators do because there's no point)

As for barrel length and accuracy, you lose more velocity than actual accuracy when shooting from a shorter barrel in the vast majority of cases, and most accuracy loss occurs not from the shorter barrel, but the shooter themselves due to the shorter sight radius. The barrel length itself contributes much less than commonly thought of when it comes to accuracy, barring obvious exceptions. In most cases, the shooter is more responsible for the accuracy (or lack thereof) of modern firearms than the firearm itself.

Also worth pointing out that the M4A1 and M16A4 are two entirely different platforms to begin with, and comparing the two on accuracy based on barrel length is comparing apples to oranges.

Where barrel length really comes into play is with small, intermediate sized cartridges (like 5.5.56x45mm/.223 or 5.45x39mm) that are more dependent on velocity to be lethal than a full-sized rifle cartridge (like 7.62x51mm/.308 ). 5.56x45mm, especially the original 55gr loading, can have it's lethality affected by things like barrel length and rifling twist. Originally the AR-15 had a rather slow twist rate (like 1:12" or 1:14") that stabilized the bullet just enough to be accurate, but made it very unstable once it hit something. That's why there were early reports from Vietnam of it being devastating and ripping off limbs or chunks out of torsos. It would hit flesh, immediately start tumbling in the body, and would cause horrible wounds. The problem is that just hitting jungle foliage would cause the bullet to tumble as well, so they went to a faster twist rate to stabilize the round better. I think 1:10" or 1:9". Even with this faster twist rate, at the velocities the round was traveling out of a 20" barrel the 55gr bullets would keyhole in flesh and the stresses of traveling sideways through flesh would cause the bullet to break in two and create two different wound channels.

But it's a fine line to walk for that lethality. It's been a while since I read up on it, but for something like every 2" of barrel length removed the velocity is decreased by 150fps. So when you start getting down to 14.5" barrels like on the M4, or even 10" like on the Mk18, the effective lethal range for a 5.56x45mm weapon is drastically reduced. This is the problem the French GIGN encountered when they responded to the 2015 terrorist attacks. They were armed with HK416s with short barrels and were having a hard time putting bad guys down, which is why they now use the CZ BREN 2 in 7.62x39mm because that cartridge works a lot better with short barrels. That's why I love the AUG so much. You can have a full 20" barrel in a package as small as an AR carbine, so you get the full velocity out of 5.56x45mm. And if you really want something more compact you can put a 16" barrel on it in seconds.

And the M16A4 and M4 are both part of the same family of weapons. The M16 is the rifle and the M4 is the carbine, but their operating system and parts are exactly the same. The main difference is just barrel length.

 

[Thornforg]

And the M16A4 and M4 are both part of the same family of weapons. The M16 is the rifle and the M4 is the carbine, but their operating system and parts are exactly the same. The main difference is just barrel length.

I suppose I should've said Mandarins to Navels instead of apples to oranges, but still, comparing the two based on accuracy with barrel length in mind is something novices, nofuns and smoothbrains do.

I share a similar love for the AUG, though really only for the A3 models, where they really perfected the bullpup design in form and function. To be fair, though, the OG and A1s had a certain kind of charm to them with their weirdly smooth poly frame and that super squishy trigger they used to have that felt like your were trying to pull the trigger on a some cheap candle lighter rather than a firearm. Thankfully my A3's trigger is much more crisp than the OG Aug's was.

 

[The Dude]

I suppose I should've said Mandarins to Navels instead of apples to oranges, but still, comparing the two based on accuracy with barrel length in mind is something novices, nofuns and smoothbrains do.

I share a similar love for the AUG, though really only for the A3 models, where they really perfected the bullpup design in form and function. To be fair, though, the OG and A1s had a certain kind of charm to them with their weirdly smooth poly frame and that super squishy trigger they used to have that felt like your were trying to pull the trigger on a some cheap candle lighter rather than a firearm. Thankfully my A3's trigger is much more crisp than the OG Aug's was.

Yeah, barrel length does not always equal accuracy. It depends on several factors. Barrel stiffness and harmonics are far more important. When the Mk14 Mod 0 was being developed for the SEALs, they found they could go from a 22" GI contour barrel to an 18" medium contour barrel with improved accuracy and a negligible loss of range because the shorter barrel was stiffer than the USGI barrel.

And you mean an AUG A3 like this one? I actually like all the iterations of the AUG. I'd love to own an A1 one day, the one with the big chunky charging handle with the forward assist built in, but the A3 is definitely better for modern tactics and mounting modern optics and accessories.

 

[Thornforg]

Yeah, barrel length does not always equal accuracy. It depends on several factors. Barrel stiffness and harmonics are far more important. When the Mk14 Mod 0 was being developed for the SEALs, they found they could go from a 22" GI contour barrel to an 18" medium contour barrel with improved accuracy and a negligible loss of range because the shorter barrel was stiffer than the USGI barrel.

And you mean an AUG A3 like this one? I actually like all the iterations of the AUG. I'd love to own an A1 one day, the one with the big chunky charging handle with the forward assist built in, but the A3 is definitely better for modern tactics and mounting modern optics and accessories.

View attachment 1475058

Very nice. I installed the cqc rail and a vertical foregrip/light combo on mine. Not a huge fan of angled foregrips in most cases. Threw on an Elcan SpecterDR and it runs drills like a champ. Been meaning to throw a can on my 16" and see how it runs with some basic 55gr, but then Steyr went ahead and came out with a quick-lock suppressor and I'm a sucker for OEM mods, so I've been looking to get my hands on one of those.

 

[Distant Stare]

I might make a bullpup AK for the fun of it...

 

[Badungus Kabungus]

Is ammo really that expensive in the US right now? Saw someone post here that 9mm 115gr FMJ is 30 cents USD per round.

 

[AMHOLIO]

I'd like to learn more about guns. Can you guys suggest some resoueces or good videos on em? I know next to nothing, aside from a few How Suff Works article, don't point it at anyone you don't like, and if I see a gun report it to my parents (but I live away from them now what do i do Cool Cat ).

 

[SIGSEGV]

Why yes, I am compensating for my colossal penis. How could you tell?

 

[TerminalTryHard]

I'd like to learn more about guns. Can you guys suggest some resoueces or good videos on em? I know next to nothing, aside from a few How Suff Works article, don't point it at anyone you don't like, and if I see a gun report it to my parents (but I live away from them now what do i do Cool Cat ).

Well what kind of stuff are you looking to learn? Are you looking for mechanical information? Historical information? Or are you leaning more tactical?

 

[AMHOLIO]

Well what kind of stuff are you looking to learn? Are you looking for mechanical information? Historical information? Or are you leaning more tactical?

All 3 are groovy, but I'm mostly looking for mechanical and tatical. I have vague ideas how guns work and no idea what's best for what purpose (which is why I asked this thread because I believe enough of you aren't the middle-highschool tards screeching about CoD & CS:GO guns). I don't want to be a gun n00b, I'm scared of gun pedantics teabagging me in my sleep for doing something stupid. Thanks for asking

 

[The Dude]

All 3 are groovy, but I'm mostly looking for mechanical and tatical. I have vague ideas how guns work and no idea what's best for what purpose (which is why I asked this thread because I believe enough of you aren't the middle-highschool tards screeching about CoD & CS:GO guns). I don't want to be a gun n00b, I'm scared of gun pedantics teabagging me in my sleep for doing something stupid. Thanks for asking

Are you looking for something for personal protection, or recreation? Basic rules of safety are always keep your finger until you are ready to shoot (as in aiming at the target), always treat a firearm as if it's loaded (even if you know it's cleared), never point a firearm at anything you aren't prepared to destroy, and always clear a weapon before handling it (making sure the magazine and chamber are both empty visually and physically).

A good place to start is with a 9mm handgun. CZ makes excellent pistols for an affordable price, but it's always better to go to a local gun shop and handle a few different pistols. Find one that fits you best. You want to be able to bring the gun up to your eye and line the sights up without having to shift the gun around much. A lot of gun shops will offer basic safety and function classes for people new to firearms. And there is no shame in going to your local bang shop and letting them know you're new to firearms and want to learn or get advice.

 

[AMHOLIO]

Are you looking for something for personal protection, or recreation? Basic rules of safety are always keep your finger until you are ready to shoot (as in aiming at the target), always treat a firearm as if it's loaded (even if you know it's cleared), never point a firearm at anything you aren't prepared to destroy, and always clear a weapon before handling it (making sure the magazine and chamber are both empty visually and physically).

A good place to start is with a 9mm handgun. CZ makes excellent pistols for an affordable price, but it's always better to go to a local gun shop and handle a few different pistols. Find one that fits you best. You want to be able to bring the gun up to your eye and line the sights up without having to shift the gun around much. A lot of gun shops will offer basic safety and function classes for people new to firearms. And there is no shame in going to your local bang shop and letting them know you're new to firearms and want to learn or get advice.

I'm trying to write a story about a dude who shoots vampires with guns, otherwise I'd try some myself. What's comfy for my baby hands won't be the same for the dude. (And ah I remember a few people telling me that too - Brandon Lee always comes to mind )

This is useful information and I'll keep it on me for the future (never know when your job asks you to move to a shit area or walk through one, always good to have something on hand for that). It's not what I'm looking for, but it never hurts to know more, I apologize for not specifying as much. Thank you, dude I didn't consider asking a local arms dealer though - we have plenty of those in Florida, and even if I feel a little silly asking about it there for writing purposes, it would be a good idea.

 

[Thornforg]

I'm trying to write a story about a dude who shoots vampires with guns, otherwise I'd try some myself. What's comfy for my baby hands won't be the same for the dude. (And ah I remember a few people telling me that too - Brandon Lee always comes to mind )

This is useful information and I'll keep it on me for the future (never know when your job asks you to move to a shit area or walk through one, always good to have something on hand for that). It's not what I'm looking for, but it never hurts to know more, I apologize for not specifying as much. Thank you, dude I didn't consider asking a local arms dealer though - we have plenty of those in Florida, and even if I feel a little silly asking about it there for writing purposes, it would be a good idea.

If you're going to write about something involving firearms while not knowing much about them, it's best to keep things simple. Basic things like how it's almost always a magazine and not a clip, how the bullet if the bit on the end and the rest is the casing, how the vast majority of firearms are not, in fact, automatic or machine guns. Some guns have hammers, some are striker fired. Some are belt-fed. Some are bolt action. Some are big, and some are small.

Your best bet is to pick the guns you want your characters to use and learn about those guns. If you pick a revolver, but your character shoots thirty times before reloading, that could (and likely would) earn you some rightfully-placed criticism on your work.

You don't have to be an expert in all firearms. Just be above average (knowing the average person doesn't know fucking anything), and you'll do just fine. I would also suggest finding a range where you can rent out the guns you want to use and getting a feel for them. How it sits in your hand, the recoil, the ease or lack thereof when it comes to reloading, etc. Your character would obviously handle things differently from you, but it would give you a starting point placed firmly in reality over preconceived notions based on television, movies, and video games.

The more you learn, the better you'll be able to write it. The better it's written, the better the overall story will be.

 

[Maskull]

Any you had hands-on experience with one of Chiappa's revolvers? I know they're kind of goofy but I've loved the Mateba since I first saw one back in '06.

 

[Smleman303]

Any you had hands-on experience with one of Chiappa's revolvers? I know they're kind of goofy but I've loved the Mateba since I first saw one back in '06.

I do. Have shot the 357 one, fires both 38s and 357s while the mateba requires a spring change to use different ammo. Oddly the one I've handled is load specific depending on the distance, don't know if you handload but that is one thing to factor. Otherwise a good handling gun, lighter than a similar Smith and the recoil impulse is more positive due to the design and results in a reduced muzzle climb. Trigger is good out the box as well.