Obsession with tactical rifles & equipment

[rdog]

Some younger shooters & gun shops seem to have an obsession with tactical fire arms & equipment , cammo chassis
rifles, high capacity magazines. muzzle breaks bipods , night vision gear, military packs & cloathing i have seen kids at the range with muzzle breaks on a 22 RF , & banana mags & tactical scopes, I believe that is the wrong image to be setting & it plays right into the anti gun turds agenda. Or am i out of touch?. The blued steel & walnut hunting rifle seems to be a thing of the past . They even sell lever release 12 g shot guns with pistol grip stocks & detachable box magazines, for duck hunting.

 

[sierraone]

Or am i out of touch?

No you are not out of touch. And its not just kids either. The average shooter is the U.S. does not hunt. We hunters are far outnumbered by shooters that would never buy walnut and blue. We hunters are outnumbered by about 7 or 8 to 1. I don't foresee it changing. I can only promise that I will not contribute to it because I just don't have any interest in ARs and all of their trinkets.

 

[mark-hunter]

You are absolutely right. This is my way of thinking as well.
But, maybe, I am just a dinosaur lost in new age?
Wrong image setting, by some gun owners, is a problem in my dinosaur perception.

minor detail is: muzzle break on 22lr.
Shooters in precision competitions with scope on 22, consider that expanding gasses on muzzle, can affect accuracy of bullet near muzzle.
This is the reason that some are using this gadget on scoped 22, because it diverts gasses sideways, and "allegedly" optimizes the accuracy.
(for me this is acceptable, especially if accurised 22 does not look like tactical rifle, but is really a classic rifle by look.

However:
Historically. once when the market was flooded with classic rifles, and auto rifles banned (in USA), and then the rules slacked again, this created the vacuum on the market creating the demand for tactical look rifles. The era of ar15 started. The market had everything, and dealers wanted to sell something new, factories obliged and supplied.
So, tactical frenzy begun.
And it is now in full swing. This creates endless daily political debate, and deeply polarizing american society, with far reaching effect on negative legislature on many other countries outside of US (Canada, new Zealand, etc)

Now what to do about public image?
I will accept (public will accept), tactical look rifle, used as tool of generally, globally, or nationally recognized sport (IPSC, PRS, etc), providing that shooters act responsibly, ethically, and give acceptable image in public.

Acceptable public image, means:
- dress code
- safe behaviour
- emphasizing in public the recognized sport, successes in competition and firearms used for such sport.
- ethical and responsible behavior
- proper language, words used
- ethical public photo, if photo must be published

Dress code to be applied, by shooting organisation, military dress, camo and look, scrutinized, not to be allowed, especially on high levele competitions.

Language:
next is to be considered language used:
avoid using "tactical", "assault", "mil spec", "CQB"and similar words in civilian and sport communication and especially in advertising.

The proper word is MSR - modern sporting rifle.
Better word to use is "sporting firearm", rather then "weapon", etc

High cap mags:
Sporting organisation can help, by regulating max allowed mag capacity.
in my view if an international sport organisation, put reasonable limit to mag capacity, (for example 15 or 20), shooters will not be discriminated on any competition. So no reason to have race in banana mags by individuals.

Problem makers - how to control them;
Finally, the use of such rifles, out of recognized sport disciplines makes the real problem created by people who are not members of any recognized association, or local gun clubs
Non members generally dont have code of ethics. And they are not cultivated nor educated.

It all comes from gun owners - "wannabe-swat", "wannabe-seal", or "wannabe - special force - some kind", who watch movies, grow up on play station, and have easy access to such equipment in the shops, but in reality are not educated or cultivated to the acceptable level, for respectable gun owner

How to control public image of such people I really have no idea.
For them, actually, the solution is education, but how to impose this on them I have no idea. They should be forced (encouraged, is soft word) to become a members of: IDPA, IPSC, PRS, NRA, ISSF,., whatever... each of those organisations has code of conduct.
And mavericks, usually dont have a code of ethics.

As a parallel, Europe has more strict gun laws, in most of European countries, when compared to USA.
in order to get the license to have a firearm, as a rule, one must be a member of sport shooting club, or national hunting association.

All those organisations have various ethical codes, and codes of conduct, and by the time a person gets his gun license, with proven status as active and certified member, he is already in the frame of acceptable behavior.
This difference, is often seen: when somebody makes something unsafe on the range, he is often told "not to be cowboy", or "be safe - this is not america" (no pun intended). But bad image is here.

So, the way how I see, "non-members", "free lancers", and TV-self-thought-gun owning mavericks, are creating the problem of public image. They need to be .. educated...

 

[Kalthoff]

The blued steel & walnut hunting rifle seems to be a thing of the past .

The "blued steel & walnut" rifle with Mauser actions were used in two World Wars by both sides.

They were also used in countless other wars for a century.

The "blued steel & walnut" rifle are as much a "military style weapon" as the Stoner AR-10/15 family.

 

[Nhoro]

I am pretty relaxed about the "tactical" look. It doesn't appeal to me at all, my guns are blued steel and wood-not even a laminate in sight.

But I grew up playing 'armies' with my friends, I never served but my father and grandfather both did and I was born during the war here. Mortar attacks and convoys and the old man had an FN in the gun cabinet. I can see how they would appeal to many people and firing off a semi auto AR is good fun. I reckon we should all stick together more-the anti's don't care what the rifle looks like, they want all firearms gone and just cos your neighbour has poor taste in firearms-dont kick him in the groin.Even ugly people need a wife- guns are pretty much the same.

 

[Vashper]

It would be better to euthanize them. But, in my opinion, the current political system does not allow this yet. All the recent shooting incidents in our country in recent years have been associated not with hunting arms, but with these "tactical arms" - short-barreled Turkish semi-automatic shotguns and pump-action, AKM-like carbines under 9par. The maniacs were not supporters of "self-defense", they simply took advantage of a hole in the legislation that allows non-hunters to acquire dangerous arms.

 

[USMA84DAB]

I am a hunter - and I use AR-15s, AR-10s, and bolt guns. My bolt guns, when possible, are stainless and synthetic/plastic. I use these because they perform better vs. warping walnut and more easily rusted blued steel. The only reason I haven't kryloned my Ruger Alaskan is because I wasn't sure what the goofy laws would be in RSA/the reaction from SAPS. I will probably paint it for the return trip. The .495 A-Square I am building cannot be constructed with a synthetic stock - not mainstream enough to find one for it - so I am forced to use walnut. I probably won't paint it - no one painted their rifles in the 19th/20th century (except for the Brits and their military rifles), and tons of critters were slain with walnut and blued rifles. Most camo today seems to be sold to catch the hunters as much as for use against the quarry's eyes - kinda like fishing lures. Jeans and red/black plaid wool coats have taken generations of deer in the woods. RealTree does seem to make it easier vs. the coyotes, though.

I gave up on walnut when I spent hours and hours fitting a replacement stock on an M-1 Garand, and then gashed the hell out of it on the first afternoon hunting with it when a rock caught my boot and I fell. I nearly cried.

The AR platform is:
- easier to carry and quicker to use
- I can build it myself
- Easier to mount optics to
- I can modify it to perfectly fit me and be a Goldilocks gun
- Shortly, I unfortunately believe the REGULAR capacity magazines will be used in Civil War 2. Much better rate of fire that way than 3 rounds of .375 Ruger at a time/reload.
- Not allowed for hunting in Africa

I bear no ill-will to those who wish to stay in the 19th or 20th centuries with regard to their firearm technology. Cowboy Action shooting is about dress-up/pretending and getting to shoot. Many who go on safari do the same, conjuring up Hunter, Pondoro, Hemingway, Roosevelt, etc.. Go for that if you want to. Some re-enacting is fun and useful to remind us where we came from. Putting a history student behind a Mosin-Nagant, then a K98, and then an M-1 Garand teaches them a great deal.

The logical extension for "better mousetrap" played out would then be to have ranging and laser designating thermal scopes that do enhance your hit probability and quarry detection. I feel that this is too great an advantage to permit things to be called hunting. It seems everyone has a different threshold as to where they are happy matching up against the animal. Some use wooden bows. Hell, Missouri has an atlatl season! Some use compound bows with bells and whistles. Some use front stuffers, some naked-topped, blued, model 70s. We each get to determine (within the game laws) how much of an advantage we want to give the animal.

RANT WARNING!
I markedly disagree with the castration gymnastics of refusing to refer to a rifle as a weapon, or MSR, or reducing magazine capacity to appear less scary. Communists are NEVER satisfied until they have dominated everything and everyone. There is no compromising your way to coexistence/victory with them. You kill them, or they kill you. As soon as you placate them by de-scarying your weapon by calling it a sporting rifle, they move the goal posts for the next incremental bite of your freedoms. You have also, then, surrendered the genuine reason for owning weapons - overthrowing a despotic government and defending yourself - and you strengthen their case for seizing your "nice to have, but not a right/essential" toys. Words DO matter. Look at "mostly peaceful demonstrations vs. what a sane person would specify as burning, looting, and rioting. RSA is now fighting to retain their right to defend themselves - the government currently is trying to remove this right from their gun laws! Just like Bill Ruger, you are operating off of a misconception that their is reason/logic/fair play in effect here. Communists only care about the goal/outcome/objective. They have no morals, no ethics. Any and everything is acceptable as long as it advances them towards their goal. Lie, cheat, steal, murder, use children as pedophile honey pots to entrap politicians - anything to be in power. ANY heinous act is acceptable so long as it advances the party towards complete control. I hope enough of us wake up and see this before we are falling into the mass grave with a 9mm projectile wound channel through our brain pan.

 

[mark-hunter]

EU = communists
New Zealand = communists
UK = communists
Canada = communists
USA = under serious threat of communists.

Although not frequently mentioned, but could be concluded based on gun laws;
Japan = communists
India = communists

etc... the list can continue.

None of those countries have ruling communist party in power, as a matter of fact.

I think that we need to define the word "communist".

 

[Wyatt Smith]

Every kid my age age grew up playing “Call of Duty” they then want the guns they used in the game. Most didn’t grow up hunting birds in the backyard with a daisy like I did. And most weren’t given a gun for Christmas like I got when I was 10.
When they are old enough to have a big a gun, they have money to do so (if they work) and they want the M4 carbine from “Modern warfare” not the Winchester 94.
I think this is good, provided that they receive proper gun safety training.
Just remember the second amendment is not at all about hunting.

 

[Mark A Ouellette]

Gentlemen,

Let's not allow outside groups to divide an conquer us gun owners.

Years ago I had no use for a "Black Gun", i.e. AR-15. I shot, cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned then in my Marine Corps career. I also competed placed very high with iron sighted M-16A2 Service Rifles. Then, almost two decades after entering a "Retired Duty Status", somehow I ended up with an AR-15 heavy barreled varmint/target rifle. Darn, that thing was nice to handle and shoot. Still ugly as sin but it shot half minute of angle groups all day long!

There are many people who think us trophy hunters are horrible sinners and human garbage.
Probably many of us old war dogs think that people dressing in camo and competing in close combat or sniper matches are silly. They may in turn think that the Precision Pistol (formally Bullseye) that I compete in is slow and boring.

My point in the above rambling is that "Different is not bad, it is only different". While I may not care for "Billy Bad Axx" blasting away in an imaginary firefight, Billy and friends are a if not the) major portion of gun owners. Most of them are in fact "Responsible" gun owners. And heck, what Billy shoots might be fun, if I didn't have to play dress up.

Let's all stick together against a common foe. Otherwise, they will destroy us.

 

[Hogpatrol]

Two gun action challenge is all the rage at my club. The head count at the first match has now tripled,
while the other matches have remained relatively static. The future of gun owning is our youth, ignore them and their desires and you take another step in the wrong direction. As others have posted, hunters are a small minority of gun owners. One only needs to look at online vendors' target versus hunting bullet inventory. A target shooter will shoot in one match what the average hunter shoots in ten years.

Edit: For the two gun match, you are advised to bring at least 100 rounds and preferably more. Mag limit is 30 for rifle and 33 for pistol.

 

[Mark A Ouellette]

The first time I went to the SHOT Show and walked through two full halls of AR-15 related guns and gadgets, I mumbled to myself, "Who buys this shtt?" The answer is in fact an awful lot of gun enthusiasts.

 

[YancyW]

Some younger shooters & gun shops seem to have an obsession with tactical fire arms & equipment , cammo chassis
rifles, high capacity magazines. muzzle breaks bipods , night vision gear, military packs & cloathing i have seen kids at the range with muzzle breaks on a 22 RF , & banana mags & tactical scopes, I believe that is the wrong image to be setting & it plays right into the anti gun turds agenda. Or am i out of touch?. The blued steel & walnut hunting rifle seems to be a thing of the past . They even sell lever release 12 g shot guns with pistol grip stocks & detachable box magazines, for duck hunting.

I think you are conflating sport shooters with hunters and the overlap of those two groups is shirking over time. I've been to several long-range shooting classes over the last couple years, I was one of just a few in the classes who actually hunts, the rest were just people who enjoyed shooting as a sport. Same for all the other schools I regularly attend, they are all defensive shooting in nature, those in attendance are no more likely to be a hunter than any other random crowd. They are just people how enjoy shooting and also want to be able to do it well if they are ever in a position where it is required.

 

[TTundra]

Every kid my age age grew up playing “Call of Duty” they then want the guns they used in the game. Most didn’t grow up hunting birds in the backyard with a daisy like I did. And most weren’t given a gun for Christmas like I got when I was 10.
When they are old enough to have a big a gun, they have money to do so (if they work) and they want the M4 carbine from “Modern warfare” not the Winchester 94.
I think this is good, provided that they receive proper gun safety training.
Just remember the second amendment is not at all about hunting.

Add to that as I'm 35, relatively younger for thr AH crowd, many of my age range served in the military and deployed and want a platform that they used and carried as there is familiarity with it. This coupled with so many veterans starting businesses making and modifying accessories to better them only helps.

 

[Jfet]

It is alway interesting when I bring my 470 NE to the gun range. At the beginning someone will come up to me and say this is a rifle range; shotgun range is over there. I then hand them a 470 cartridge and explain that I have a double rifle. Generally after the first two shots nobody else is shooting and they are all watching me. After the second round I take a break and that is when the questions start. In a short amount of time its not AR people talking to Traditional rifle people, its people that like all things shooting talking, sharing stories, and learning about different rifles. Yes, the guy with the special forces rifle, tattoos all over the body, and ear gauges is many times the most fascinated with my double rifle.

In the shooting community we have a bad habit of forming our own little firearm fortress mind set and it you don’t fit in then you are wrong. That is not a good habit to have.

 

[Denvir Tire]

Yes, the younger generation of shooters are indeed not hunters but shooters. At 63 years old, I'm the old man with the old wooden rifles at my gun club on Sunday afternoons.
Most of the hunters in the club fire their rifles on the weekend before deer season and that's enough for them.
These young guys exclusively own plastic stocked, not blued guns, in all iterations both bolt and pump, and auto loading, equipped with optics that cost more than some cars I've owned in the past.
This is the new reality and nothing will change it. You don't need to look long before finding someone wearing tactical clothing and a coalition beard in everyday normal life, far from the battlefield. They are emulating something they admire.
In addition, vets are comfortable with the gear they are familiar with and continue to wear it, and to use the civilian version of the service rifle they carried and used.

When I left the Infantry in the early 80's I had no desire to wear camo ever again, however, it's almost impossible to buy hunting gear now that's not camo.

The last SHOT show I attended was 20 years ago. There was a hall adjacent to the "real" show with only "black guns" in it. At the time, this was an interesting distraction from the mainstream gun industry. Friends in the business tell me the show is almost 50% tactical now.

Percussion replaced flint, cartridge replaced percussion, lever replaced single shot, bolt replaced single and now we have today.
As for this old guy, next to the Mannlicher for deer, is an AR with 3 uppers.
Iron sights for repel boarders
Big optic for daytime coyotes
Thermal for night time coyotes

It just works

 

[Tom Leoni]

I've never had any use for an AR-style rifle and I have no interest in them--heck, outside of a lone M1 Garand and a Ruger No. 1, the most modern "platform" I own is the Mauser '98.

But I don't share the OP's sentiment for two main reasons. Firstly, thanks to the AR platform the gun-owning public in the USA has increased by nearly 10 million brand-new shooters in the last 2 years alone, who have made their first purchase precisely one such rifle. These are mostly in the 25-40 year old bracket, many are minority, and we can assume that they will continue pursuing their hobby (and defending it!) for years to come. With a previously aging, and therefore shrinking, shooting population, this has been a boon for all of us. These people vote--which is one of the reasons why gun-grabbing is not being brought up by DC tyrants nearly as much as in the past. In other words, these new shooters are helping all of us--incuding those who loathe black rifles.

Secondly, we shouldn't let our political enemies define us. They have always gone for the lowest hanging fruit, but if you think that if the AR magically vanished these people would stop, you haven't been paying attention. Gone the ARs, they would only move on to the next easily-demonized group of guns, until we become England or Australia (if we're lucky). To use an analogy, it would be like feeding Joe Rogan to the censorship wolves on the idea that his talking about health issues makes it easier for the establishment to demonize all of us. No, thanks.

So no, while I probably never will pollute my gun-room with a black rifle, I am grateful to the young people who like them who are (so to speak) my brothers and sisters in arms. God bless them and may there be more and more of them.

 

[YancyW]

I've never had any use for an AR-style rifle and I have no interest in them--heck, outside of a lone M1 Garand and a Ruger No. 1, the most modern "platform" I own is the Mauser '98.

But I don't share the OP's sentiment for two main reasons. Firstly, thanks to the AR platform the gun-owning public in the USA has increased by nearly 10 million brand-new shooters in the last 2 years alone, who have made their first purchase precisely one such rifle. These are mostly in the 25-40 year old bracket, many are minority, and we can assume that they will continue pursuing their hobby (and defending it!) for years to come. With a previously aging, and therefore shrinking, shooting population, this has been a boon for all of us. These people vote--which is one of the reasons why gun-grabbing is not being brought up by DC tyrants nearly as much as in the past. In other words, these new shooters are helping all of us--incuding those who loathe black rifles.

Secondly, we shouldn't let our political enemies define us. They have always gone for the lowest hanging fruit, but if you think that if the AR magically vanished these people would stop, you haven't been paying attention. Gone the ARs, they would only move on to the next easily-demonized group of guns, until we become England or Australia (if we're lucky). To use an analogy, it would be like feeding Joe Rogan to the censorship wolves on the idea that his talking about health issues makes it easier for the establishment to demonize all of us. No, thanks.

So no, while I probably never will pollute my gun-room with a black rifle, I am grateful to the young people who like them who are (so to speak) my brothers and sisters in arms. God bless them and may there be more and more of them.

This is very true, trying to arrange the menu to where you are simply the dessert isn't really a winning strategy.

 

[Hogpatrol]

For a membership at my gun club, I can remember when all one had to do was show up at the first meeting of the year. Now, there's a two year wait list. Sign up on the list this year and it'll be 2024 before you MAY get in. I've sponsored a dozen or so over the years and now some of the newer members are taking over the positions the old farts held for decades. From this chair, all good signs.

 

[Captain Munro]

I am a younger chap, but I prefer classic rifles with walnut and blued steel. My personal interest is in classic rifles, their history in the field and all the chamberings related to them That was the first reason I joined this forum. As a veteran and 2A advocate I definitely get the tactical side of firearms. I also do a little tactical shooting, run and gun, especially with my CCW.
The threat related to political entities makes the tactical market understandable and there seems to be a lot of weekend warriors out there buying all the high speed gear they can find. I sure am disappointed when I go to gun shops and gun shows these days because all I see is black plastic and polymer. I want to look at fine rifles, but the interest just isn't there. That is why the DSC was so great. There are no gun shops in my area with my kind of rifles, the closest being Gulf Breeze Firearms.