There’s a Garand Thumb video talking with one of the main people behind the latest SOCOM sniper rifle and he touches on the considerations for bolt action versus semiautomatic. Basically, a sniper isn’t taking shots quickly enough that the semiautomatic action is making a difference, and a bolt action platform is more accurate due to tighter tolerances and the bolt not necessarily moving immediately after the shot is fired. Also, a bolt action will often let a shooter load longer bullets than fit in an AR-15 (traditionally 5.56 though 6.5 Grendel and now .224 Valkyrie and 6 ARC) or even AR-10 (.308 is traditional but 6.5 Creedmoor seems to have better legs), which translates to projectiles with really clean bullet coefficients which translates to longer range hits, more energy on target, and less variability due to wind.
Followupquestion
Part 2 could be about those unique individuals who reload 22LR.
The newest “big thing” in the flashlight world is LEP, literally lasers used as flashlights. For IR, VCSEL is the current best, but only because that technology gets around FDA rules somehow.
America is not the only country with a tradition of homemade weapons, but some of the others use them ceremonially, like the Afghan long gun on this community a couple days ago.
MYOG is a time honored tradition, and the conflict in Myanmar is doing a bang up job of showing how it can cause real problems for a despotic government.
From a builder’s perspective, if you think about a shotgun all the parts that contain the bang can be bought at Home Depot or Lowes, which just leaves the printed parts and CF Nylon looked to be the leader for frames and lower receivers last I checked. You can order that from Amazon. Firing pin could be for an AR, they’re $7 if you catch a good sale online, and the trigger could be an easy drop in AR trigger or something printed itself with a few off the shelf metal pieces for reinforcement.
This thing just begs for a 3D printed update. I’m actually rather surprised just how few 3DP shotguns are out there considering 12 gauge is basically 1/2” pipe. I’m imagining a pivot pin from an AR would work and then it just needs a good latching system. The rest is fairly simple, I imagine, and maybe it would use a revolving cassette like the Six Twelve that never arrived.
I’m Jewish, and having lost far too many relatives to centuries of bigotry in Europe culminating in the Holocaust, you can bet I’m not giving up my weapons. I don’t care what anyone says, I won’t vote for a single Dem because any compromise puts my family at further risk. It doesn’t take a history degree to look at the world and see that having limited methods of defense is all but guaranteeing another pogrom starts claiming my family. Heck, the police are all very cozy with the groups spouting Great Replacement propaganda and the Dems want me to believe the police will keep my family safe? How’s that working for other minorities?
And the coast as well. 100 miles of the coast covers a massive percentage of the population.
Try having small children; drive through a can be a lifesaver because you don’t need to unbuckle them, get their winter clothes on, get them into the restaurant, wait in line, order the food to go, then wait for the food, and then reverse the steps to get back into the car. It’s a giant PITA to just get some French fries, chicken tenders, and carrot sticks, let alone the drastically increased exposure to germs associated with a crowded restaurant. You may have heard, there’s a pretty bad wave of Covid, influenza, and RSV right now. Not sharing air with other people is a big part of staying healthy right now.