Precise Shooter 2016-11-02

Elections are next week!

Elections are just around the corner, and believe it or not, the most immediately impactful race for the state of Washington is not Clinton vs Trump. The outcome of that one should be at this point obvious.

The most important election, here, in WA - IMHO - is the congressional race between Brady Walkinshaw and Pramila Jayapal for the seat vacated by Jim McDermott. The results of this election will stay with us for a long, long time - possibly decades, because the Democrats are unlikely to challenge their own, and Republicans are not even remotely competitive here in District 7.

Of these two, Brady Walkinshaw is the one the gun community cannot afford to have in Congress. He has been an anti-gun crusader all his political life, supporting every anti-gun bill that has ever reared (and, luckily, died) in WA State House of Representatives, and co-sponsoring many.

"Assault weapons" ban, Universal background checks, large capacity magazines - Walkinshaw is an enthusiastic supporter.

Here is a small sampler of his activities:

And this is just for the current legislative session.

Notable in particular is complete absense of Walkinshaw from any proposals that would make firearms safer and less accessible to criminals. He does not actually care about violence: he is here to take your guns. And I am not saying this lightly. In fact, I have never said this about anyone in the past. But here, I think, it is appropriate.

WE DO NOT WANT THIS PERSON IN CONGRESS.

So as a gun owner in 7th congressional district, you have a choice. You have Walkinshaw. You have Pramila, who, though she would toe the party line on guns when confronted by "Moms for Bullshit" activist types, does not really care about guns one way or another. You have a bunch of other candidates who may be gun-friendly, but who have zero chance of winning. Or you can stay at home.

You could spend your vote on someone who has no chance of winning, or simply not show up at all. This is your right. But if you deeply care about gun rights in this country, please, please, please, with sugar on top, do not let an anti-gun crusader be elected into the seat he will occupy basically forever.

Do show up, and do vote for Pramila Jayapal.

And I know, this is an uninspiring election season when it comes to Presidential choices. The temptation to stay home is very high. But you don't have to vote for President to make a lasting impact on gun rights. Leave that place blank, write in yourself, your spouse, Bernie, Reagan, whoever you want. But vote in congressional elections if you are in District 7.

DO NOT LET WALKINSHAW JUST WALK IN!

Another important election issue is I1491 (AKA "an Ex Revenge Act"). This initiative is supposed to keep guns out of hands of stalkers and domestic abusers - but the definitions and scope of this piece of legislation are very, very loose. As a result, the initiative allows more or less anyone who ever lived with you in the same house to deprive you of your civil rights - without evidence - and without the right to face your accuser. You have to prove that you are "not a danger".

Here is what ACLU has to say about this initiative:

...we have concerns that the initiative has inadequate due process procedures. Further, these deficient due process procedures could set a bad precedent for other criminal justice processes. The initiative allows a broad and vaguely defined group of people (family, household member, police) to seek the protection order. A protection order can be issued based on vague criteria (“significant danger”) that a person is an “extreme risk.” The protection order can be obtained from a judge ex parte – without notice to the person being accused. This severely limits the ability of a person to challenge an order once it is entered. The initiative puts the burden of proof on the accused to show, after 12 months, that the order should be lifted. It is unclear how persons would prove their lack of danger. The concerns are compounded because of problems we’ve seen with other kinds of protection orders in WA: Although they are initially temporary, after a period of time, there are efforts to expand the scope of the orders to make them permanent, or to further abridge the due process provisions. The initiative requires recording the order in court databases, which are open to the public. A record showing that a person had gun rights taken away based on being an “extreme risk” may well haunt an individual for the rest of their life – regardless of rehabilitation – erecting barriers for them when they undergo a background check for employment, housing, etc.”

New, extended hours

I am happy to announce that Precise Shooter will now be open in Sundays starting 11/6/2016, 10am-4pm. If you plan a Sunday trip to a shooting range, you can stop by and grab some ammunition on your way.

Lots of cool, new stuff!

It's been a while since I published the last update, and a lot of things came into the store since then.

You may have noticed a wall of Tikka rifles - a new, new thing for the store. In the past we have carried mostly Savages, Remington 700p, and Remington 700 5R. I consider these models the best in terms of accuracy and price.

I was, however, always a bit Tikka-curious.

Finns have a long tradition of gun ownership (Finland is number four in the world), and a focus on marksmanship, which allowed them to hold their own against Soviet Union for a lot longer than reasonable.

As a firearm collector with a focus on Soviet and Communist block firearms, I knew for a long, long time that Finland always made the best derivatives of Soviet guns, from Mosin Nagant to Valmet reimaging of an AK-47. I could never persuade myself to sink $3k into a TRG, but I always lusted for them nevertheless.

So when a distributor had a large sale on Tikkas, I could not resist and bought a bunch for stock. One of the rifles I kept for myself, and took it to the range a few days ago.

I was not disappointed! The proper review will follow when I try it with a different scope (the scope's POI was shifting through the session, and in one case there was a considerable shift within one group, so I will retry with another scope), but here are a few targets, even with the potentially defective scope:

This is factory ammunition, mind you - and in my experience reloads could always be tuned to shoot much better.

Here are the rifles we have on hands now:

Crazy deal on Remington 700 5R rifles

Speaking of accuracy, I was able to grab a few 5R rifles in 300 WinMag at another big sale. These have essentially the same barrel and action as the famed M24 Sniper Weapon System, and we have a bunch of 5R rifles - in multiple calibers - at prices that are not repeatable ($100-$150 below the Internet).

Description SKU UPC Available Price 700 5R Stainless Threaded 24" 300WinMag 85508 047700855080 1 (in stock) $990.95

New Savages

We have a very good assortment of Savage rifles, but the new ones you should consider are the Savage 11 Trophy Hunter XP ($499.95 (1 in stock)). The amazing thing about the rifle is the quality of the scope - it ships with Nikon pre-installed - and the price. This is a $150 scope, minimum, plus rings and mounts, which means that you are getting a top quality rifle for about $330.

Ruger 10/22

We have a couple of unusual, but fantastically priced 10/22s. They came from a distributor's stock blowout.

First is a standard carbine, but dressed in white (!) tactical stock with AR-15 style buttstock.

Price: (currently unavailable)

Surplus handguns

For the second, the stock color is unusually pink, but this is a very nice, very soft to the touch Hogue rubber overmolded stock (which goes for $93.46 on Midway right now) and a stainless target barrel ($99.99 on Midway).

Price: (currently unavailable)

At this price, by the way, I am keeping one for myself.

Witnesses

You may have noticed that we love CZ guns very much - but also, we love CZ clones (CZ 75 is perhaps the most frequently cloned design).

We carry every Canik clone we can get our hands on (see reviews here and here, then come to the store and buy them while we still have them).

We have had poor luck getting the most famous CZ clones - the Witness pistols made by Tanfoglio. Tanfoglio makes the most CZ 75-based models with a possible exception of CZ itself, and when it comes to competition and hunting pistols it is actually ahead of the CZ. But because of their price/performance ratio, they typically do not stay in stock at the distributors for too long.

In the last couple of weeks we actually did get our hands on two pistols - EAA Tanfoglio Hunter in 45ACP (I wish this was 10mm, but beggars cannot be choosers), as well as the 9mm Witness.

Price (Hunter 45): (currently unavailable)

The 9mm Witness is a classic gun with a full steel frame, $170 less than a similar CZ.

Price (9mm): (currently unavailable)