I've done some of that here, but in bits and pieces as things have come up over the course of the series, rather than as a unified attempt at an introductory document. That might be an idea...

>Or be pointed someplace where such can be acquired? (preferably in
>video form, as I learn better by watching than reading)

Videos, I can't help you with; I'm sure searching "firearms basics" on YouTube would get you all kinds of content, though I'm also sure a lot of it would be polemical mulch masquerading as instruction, because that's how the Internet and the most vocal part of the Gun Culture roll nowadays. :/

--G.
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These guns of the week have been quite informative, but even going through them in a kind of marathon, I've learned enough to know that I know *nothing*. I wasn't exactly riding high on my perceived knowledge of firearms to begin with, but yikes.

Like, I'm fairly sure I can suss out with a centerfire round is (the firing pin strikes the center of the casing, along the axis, yes?) but I'm at a loss as to what a 'rimfire' is, besides something common after eating at Chipotle. (I kid, and I can at least Wikipedia that term, since I know what to look for)

>>Or be pointed someplace where such can be acquired? (preferably in
>>video form, as I learn better by watching than reading)
>
>Videos, I can't help you with; I'm sure searching "firearms basics" on
>YouTube would get you all kinds of content, though I'm also sure a lot
>of it would be polemical mulch masquerading as instruction, because
>that's how the Internet and the most vocal part of the Gun
>Culture roll nowadays. :/

Perhaps you can at least take solace in the knowledge there's a difference between a firearms enthusiast and a *gun nut*. Maybe not in the mainstream consciousness, but with people who, y'know...actually think about things.

Well, I can take this one on (and you can probably find some handy visual aids to supplement these descriptions on Wikipedia). Rimfire is basically just what it says on the tin: the explosive priming compound is rolled into the rim of the cartridge, rather than being contained in a primer fixed in the center of the cartridge face (as you correctly deduced that centerfire works). The firing pin crushes a point along the rim, setting off the compound, which is directed into the powder charge by the construction of the case.

Nowadays, you hardly ever see rimfire cartridges above .22 caliber (and only rarely below), but they were a fairly common way of doing metallic cartridges in their early days (mid-1800s), up to quite large calibers. They're fairly easy to manufacture, since they have fewer parts than centerfire cartridges, and they have the advantage that if they fail to fire, it's possible (albeit not necessarily easy) to rotate the cartridge a few degrees and try again with a fresh bit of rim. On the other hand, they can't be reloaded, and they offset their, um, hit-again-able-ness by having a higher probability to misfire in the first place.

.22 rimfire, specifically in the form of .22 Long Rifle, has survived into the modern day because it's (relatively) inexpensive, compact enough to be packaged and sold in large quantities without a lot of fuss, and is generally mild and inoffensive to shoot. This makes it both novice-friendly and convenient for experienced shooters who just want to get through a lot of rounds without punishing themselves unduly. It's virtually useless for hunting except on very small game, and although plenty lethal enough to warrant treating with care, you'd have to be pretty confident in your marksmanship to depend on it for self-defense, so it's most often used for target shooting and plinking.

(Plinking, in case anyone doesn't know, is just what it sounds like: target shooting, except instead of formal targets, you're shooting at bottles, tin cans, and various other items of shootable junk.)

To expand a little further, because why not: Modern centerfire cartridges use what's called the Boxer primer system, which means the primer is a separate modular component that's press-fitted into the primer pocket in the center of the face. One may also encounter the earlier Berdan primer, which looks the same in an assembled cartridge but is constructed in such a way that they're much harder to remove and replace once expended. Berdan-primed cartridges are often dismissed as "unreloadable", but the truth is that they're just enough of a hassle to reload, unlike Boxer cartridges, that hobbyists generally don't bother.

There have been a number of other cartridge ignition systems tried over the years, many of them devised in efforts to circumvent patents on centerfire systems and promptly abandoned as soon as those patents were no longer in force - pinfire, teatfire (seriously), and so forth. Ian over at Forgotten Weapons has done a number of pieces on 19th-century guns using different oddball ignition systems.

--G.
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A fancy-looking gun for newbies to cut their teeth on before they get into 'real' guns, as it were? It certainly fits the first part!

I've been leery about going to a firing range and trying out a gun ever since I saw an episode of CSI (I forget which flavor) that had a novice shooter get 'bitten' by the....damn I forget the term. The slide? Feels like theres another word for it - In the bit between his thumb and forefinger, and I've been afraid of that happening to me; it's a rather sensitive spot to get bitten by a fairly heavy spring throwing around - what, a half pound of metal?

Yes. More the former than the latter, I think, by Beretta's own internal estimation, anyway; it has a Serious Business vibe about it, with its interchangeable parts and its accessory rail, that speaks of the expectation that formal range time will be its thing. Though I'm sure it would do fine at plinking as well.

>I was wondering about its suitability
>as an actual...I suppose the term would be 'Personal Defense Weapon'?

As it happens, PDW in all caps is a newfangled jargon phrase for a particular type of military shoulder arm, somewhere between a submachine gun and an assault rifle. They're in vogue nowadays as the type of weapon to be issued to rear-area troops—artillerists, truck drivers, and the like—who previously would've been issued either SMGs or, if you go far enough back in history, carbines.

But that aside, generally speaking you would not want to rely on this, or any other .22, for personal security. Attitudes about where the lower bound for that kind of thing are vary, and have changed a lot over the last hundred years or so. As mentioned in a number of other GotWs, the .32 ACP/7.65mm Short cartridge used to be the go-to for defensive handguns (both civilian and military/police), but nowadays it would be considered underpowered for that role. Most modern authorities insist on .380 ACP/9mm Short at a bare minimum, and really recommend the full 9mm Parabellum if it can be managed. There are a number of well-made 9mm pistols on the market today that are as compact and handy as the .32s of yesteryear, though I don't own any myself.

>A fancy-looking gun for newbies to cut their teeth on before they get
>into 'real' guns, as it were? It certainly fits the first part!

Like I said, I think it's partly meant for that and partly intended to appeal as well to the experienced target shooter looking for the New Hotness. Guns have fashion trends just like cars and electronics, and the tactical raygun look is in right now.

>I've been leery about going to a firing range and trying out a gun
>ever since I saw an episode of CSI (I forget which flavor) that had a
>novice shooter get 'bitten' by the....damn I forget the term. The
>slide? Feels like theres another word for it - In the bit between his
>thumb and forefinger, and I've been afraid of that happening to me;
>it's a rather sensitive spot to get bitten by a fairly heavy spring
>throwing around - what, a half pound of metal?

That can happen, although it's generally a consequence of carelessness or poor technique these days. The Colt M1911 (old Army sidearm) and Browning Hi-Power (see relevant GotW) have reputations as biters, in both cases largely because they were designed not to be held with as high a grip as is fashionable nowadays. (I've never experienced the Browning bite myself, though I did once whack my thumb in good shape with the bolt of a Ruger .22.) The Browning designs bite by pinching the thumb web with their hammers, though, not actually cutting into the shooter's hand with the slide rails. No gun that did that as a matter of course would survive long on the market; people who have that happen to them (and it does happen) were just plain Doing It Wrong.

Not Doing It Wrong is a big part—arguably the biggest part— of recreational shooting, and training should reflect that. It's a fine line between fearing the weapon (which does the operator no good) and not respecting it (which does no one any good), and it's not easy to teach. And it's very true that semiautos are disconcerting to a lot of people specifically because of the issue you mention, that there is a significant amount of mass moving briskly around simply by the way they work. It's hard to forget that every time you fire, you're depending on the skill of the designer and the quality of the materials to keep a big piece of metal from flying into your eye. (Which is one of the reasons smart shooters wear safety glasses.)

I've never taught a complete raw novice to shoot, but I think if I did, I would do it like my grandfather did with me and start with something single-shot. Then, perhaps, move on to revolvers. Save semiautos for the 200-level course. :)

--G.
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Hah! And here's me thinking I was being all clever and technical term-y! :)

>But that aside, generally speaking you would not want to rely
>on this, or any other .22, for personal security. Attitudes about
>where the lower bound for that kind of thing are vary, and have
>changed a lot over the last hundred years or so. As mentioned in a
>number of other GotWs, the .32 ACP/7.65mm Short cartridge used to be
>the go-to for defensive handguns (both civilian and military/police),
>but nowadays it would be considered underpowered for that role. Most
>modern authorities insist on .380 ACP/9mm Short at a bare minimum, and
>really recommend the full 9mm Parabellum if it can be managed. There
>are a number of well-made 9mm pistols on the market today that are as
>compact and handy as the .32s of yesteryear, though I don't own any
>myself.

I remember something else from years ago; a batman comic that said Commissioner Gordon doesn't give his men 9mms (I think it was) so that any shots his cops miss don't hit a kid a half mile away. I think it was a thing set during or near the No Mans Land event.

>>A fancy-looking gun for newbies to cut their teeth on before they get
>>into 'real' guns, as it were? It certainly fits the first part!
>
>Like I said, I think it's partly meant for that and partly intended to
>appeal as well to the experienced target shooter looking for the New
>Hotness. Guns have fashion trends just like cars and electronics, and
>the tactical raygun look is in right now.

It almost-sorta-not-really looks to me like it may be wanting in on the NuRobocop market. It has a super vague (to me at least) 'modern Auto-9' look to it.

>>I've been leery about going to a firing range and trying out a gun
>>ever since I saw an episode of CSI (I forget which flavor) that had a
>>novice shooter get 'bitten' by the....damn I forget the term. The
>>slide? Feels like theres another word for it - In the bit between his
>>thumb and forefinger, and I've been afraid of that happening to me;
>>it's a rather sensitive spot to get bitten by a fairly heavy spring
>>throwing around - what, a half pound of metal?
>
>That can happen, although it's generally a consequence of carelessness
>or poor technique these days. The Colt M1911 (old Army sidearm) and
>Browning Hi-Power (see relevant GotW) have reputations as biters, in
>both cases largely because they were designed not to be held with as
>high a grip as is fashionable nowadays. (I've never experienced the
>Browning bite myself, though I did once whack my thumb in good shape
>with the bolt of a Ruger .22.) The Browning designs bite by pinching
>the thumb web with their hammers, though, not actually cutting into
>the shooter's hand with the slide rails. No gun that did that
>as a matter of course would survive long on the market; people who
>have that happen to them (and it does happen) were just plain Doing It
>Wrong.

Yeah, it was pretty specifically a first time shooter if I recall the episode. I think it may have also been a shooter firing 'gangsta style' because I remember there also being a burn from an ejected cartridge on his arm, and they used the bite to prove he was the shooter, not just a bystander. I could be conflating two different episodes tho, it's been *years*. Basically a newbie being a moron, and he got doubly hurt for it.

>Not Doing It Wrong is a big part—arguably the biggest
>part— of recreational shooting, and training should reflect
>that. It's a fine line between fearing the weapon (which does the
>operator no good) and not respecting it (which does no one any
>good), and it's not easy to teach. And it's very true that semiautos
>are disconcerting to a lot of people specifically because of the issue
>you mention, that there is a significant amount of mass moving briskly
>around simply by the way they work. It's hard to forget that every
>time you fire, you're depending on the skill of the designer and the
>quality of the materials to keep a big piece of metal from flying into
>your eye. (Which is one of the reasons smart shooters wear safety
>glasses.)

Firearms safety I think I DO know, despite not handling one before;

* Safety on at all times unless actively shooting
* keep it unloaded unless you intend to shoot
* don't point a gun at, or in the vague direction of, anything you don't mind being shot including yourself
* finger off the trigger unless you are shooting
* SERIOUSLY, DON'T POINT THE GODDAMN THING AT ANYTHING YOU DON'T WANT TO DIE
* always treat the gun as if it's loaded, even if you know it's not

....one or two of those may be firing range rules and not general firearms safety, but they all sound like a good idea to follow to me.

>I've never taught a complete raw novice to shoot, but I think if I
>did, I would do it like my grandfather did with me and start with
>something single-shot. Then, perhaps, move on to revolvers. Save
>semiautos for the 200-level course. :)

Are there any of those that aren't antiques in personal collections these days? Those seem like they'd be hard to rent at the range.

One that Gryphon's demonstrated in the writing (Kaname Sterling, in DSM Panic 1) is being aware of what's behind the target. Bullets don't always stop at what a shooter was aiming at.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

When I was learning how to shoot, this was referred to as "joining the Order of the Bloody Crescent" with the idea being "dumbass, it hurts if you do that, don't do that"

>>I've never taught a complete raw novice to shoot, but I think if I
>>did, I would do it like my grandfather did with me and start with
>>something single-shot. Then, perhaps, move on to revolvers. Save
>>semiautos for the 200-level course. :)
>
>Are there any of those that aren't antiques in personal collections
>these days? Those seem like they'd be hard to rent at the range.

Actually, there are many companies that make single shot rifles for expressly this task. They're pretty much just bolt action rifles that don't have any sort of magazine, so the shooter has to open the bolt, put a round into the chamber, then close the bolt in order to shoot.

You can replicate this with many bolt action rifles by just removing the magazine. You could probably do the same with this pistol, come to think of it, as it doesn't have a magazine safety, I wonder if that's why it doesn't?

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

Quite possibly (that and magazine safeties screw up the trigger pull). The ready accessibility of the chamber when the slide is open also lends itself to that kind of thing.

As for availability, I'm not sure anyone is manufacturing a gun like, say, the Hawes Favorite new nowadays, but the thing about guns is that they're quite durable. It's not that hard to find used ones.

--G.
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That's a good point, but I think I personally would rather leave the *owning* of guns to others. I'll rent from the range if I do anything.

...that is a thing that ranges do, right?

Most do, particularly the ones that are also dealers. In the US, anyway. I'm not sure how it works in Canada (other than "with greater difficulty", presumably).

--G.
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That's another reason I'd prefer to rent rather than own; while I'm all for documentation of who has/can have what, I think I'd rather not fall down the bureaucratic rabbit hole of getting a permit/license/whateverthehell I'd need to own one.

It appears that the US is rather more lax in that regard....to a point I personally find worrying, but my opinion on that means nothing, so no more will be said about it.

I took a look and getting a Possession and Acquisition Licence is not actually that bad:

You take a safety course or two<1> and fill out a form that's no worse than getting a passport. And let's be honest here, from what you've said you probably want to take the course(s) before you start shooting even if you don't have to.

http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/index-eng.htm

<1> One if you want something like a rifle or shotgun for hunting or target shooting, two if you want things like a handgun or a short, (but not illegally short), rifle or shotgun.

Try first, then, if I'm super into it, maybe buy. :)

The time I bought a Warhammer 40K set, paint, and Dremmel, only to lose interest halfway through was bad enough. :D

-VR
Though I would have got a proper flex shaft instead of a Dremel
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

I'm probably lucky that I never much cared for Games Workshop's art style. One entire clade of terrifying time-and-money sinks avoided. :)

--G.
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The standard formulations of these rules are the ones by Jeff Cooper:

Rule One: All guns are always loaded.
Rule Two: Never let the muzzle cover anything which you are not willing to destroy.
Rule Three: Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.
Rule Four: Always be sure of your target.

There is an additional rule I've heard expressed as "Place only limited trust in the safeties". You have to use them at times, but (as Gryphon's series has shown) you can't always trust them to work always.

-VR
However, there are other ways to express them. You can argue about anything
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

This is often reformulated to make it more explicitly an extension of a more general rule of living: "Safeties are mechanical systems, and all mechanical systems can fail."

--G.
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Hello new shooter! I liked your safety rules, those are practically religion to me and mine. The rule of thumb is that the _lowest_ grade round, the plain .22LR, is still possibly-lethal at 1 mile.

...there is .22 _short_, mind, but that's... a rare thing to encounter.

Personally, I highly recommend owning all the guns ever. That being said, a new shootist could do a lot worse than a single-shot .22 rifle for the absolute basic "which end does the bullet come out" shooting, and there is far too many directions to go from there to offer any sort of advice at all beyond "try and try before you buy" and "don't shoot anything that hasn't been OKed by the manufacturer (new gun) or a reputable gunsmith."

One of the best ways to get an idea of what a given caliber of bullet can do or will do is to wiki the caliber. Lots of lovely information about the history of the round and the physics of it.

I love guns, from a machining and historical and self defense and art and hunting standpoint. I get a laugh out of some of the weirdness though. My carry weapon, a Kimber 1911 chambered in .45 ACP, uses almost the exact same lead as my hand cannon, a Smith & Wesson .460 Performance Center build (13.5" overall length, 8lb dry weight, $2.30 a round last time I checked). But the .460 has so much more powder behind it, they're completely different rounds.

I haven't seen Gryphon post a single piece of information I find 'wrong', and certainly nothing I'd class as 'dangerous'. All his info has been solid, especially if you're a history geek :)

In fairness, you would have to be catastrophically unlucky to be killed or seriously hurt by a .22 LR bullet at a range of one mile; but I have found that a lot of the standard safety precautions in virtually anything as inherently dangerous as shooting are rooted, and rightly so, in the underlying maxim, "Never assume you are not catastrophically unlucky."

--G.
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I thought something very similar to that earlier today. And then I put on my face shield before I hit the go button and kicked the lathe up from 300rpm to 3400...

I took one, then forgot to make a place for it in the narrative.

>Also nothing about how it fires, but that's never been an
>every time thing, and I presume you're probably waiting until you get
>back to your....quarry, I think you said it was?

Gravel pit, actually, but close enough. At any rate, I don't expect that to be a particularly noteworthy experience. It's a straight blowback .22 with a fairly heavy barrel, so it should handle predictably.

>A question about the rails, too... Do the various bits you can clip
>onto a pistol actually...MEAN anything? Besides putting a flashlight
>under the barrel or something, that's simple utility; I mean like,
>scopes or laser pointers or whatever else can be put on a rail. Are
>those just being 'Tacticool' or are they actually remotely useful
>in...well, really ANY circumstances?

Sure, there are a lot of advanced sighting devices that are useful in precision target shooting, beyond simple magnification optics like the sniper scopes of old. Mind you, there are a lot of people who get those things for the bling value rather than any technical advantage they convey, but correctly used, they do seem to have useful properties to offer. (Full disclosure: This is based mainly on reading and watching InRange videos; I have no personal experience with any of them. My skill level is such that it would just be blingin' in my case. :)

--G.
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I can't speak to scopes, but laser sights (particularly grip sights because they don't snag on things) can be really useful, assuming proper alignment, in close-in defense situations. Some people clain laser sights don't help but they are banned for competition; which is suggestive. Most interesting use I have heard of for them is in training...watching how the dot moves through the shooting cycle apparantly is a reliable source of information on problems in technique.

You still, obviously, want to practice with iron sights and get good and safe without extra assistance. But if you just got out of bed without glasses as a mountain lion is coming in your back door...

-VR
and thanks to Hollywood, there are cases of bad guys running away once they see thr red dot...
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

Now I'm imagining somebody scaring away a prowler with a laser pointer.

Peter Eng
--
"It's just a good thing my cat wasn't awake."

Also popular among technical shooters nowadays is the so-called "red dot" sight, which optically imposes a red dot on the aim point from the shooter's perspective within the optic, rather than projecting it onto the target. This has obvious benefits in terms of not being all Hollywood about it.

--G.
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There's always some inherent variation, but the extractor and ejector in any given autoloading firearm will cause the spent casings to trend in a certain direction based on their geometry. In almost all designs where the cases aren't ejected from the top, they go out the right side, because that's the side that's more convenient for the majority of (i.e., right-handed) shooters. That's still the case in firearms with a one-sided ejection port; they don't just rely on the position of the port. That would lead to a lot of failures to eject, as cases left to their own devices went anywhere but out the hole. :)

--G.
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Hmm. I wonder if anybody has tried to design a firearm that can be disassembled and reassembled to change the direction of ejection? (Compare with changing the direction the doors open on a refrigerator, although obviously far more challenging.)

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Probably. If there's a variation, at this point someone has attempted it. :)

There used to be a stainless 1911 clone called the "Portsider", I forget who made it (it looked like an AMT Hardballer, of Hitman fame, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an AMT product), that was basically a mirror-imaged design for left-handed shooters. Ejection port on the left, magazine release and safety lever on the right. Unfortunately they were quite expensive, and by most accounts I've read they weren't very well-made.

(UF Trivia: The cockpit-on-the-left variation on the YT-1300, of which Daggerdisc is the most famous example, is called the "Portsider" in its honor.)

--G.
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What's it like shooting left? Lotta brass dodging? Or do you just learn how to shoot right?

Many modern semiautomatic handguns have at least partially ambidextrous and/or switchable controls,* but changing the position of the ejection port would require replacing at least the slide, if not other bits (depending on how the ejection system works). That's basically the second largest part after the frame, so not really an expense most shooters (or manufacturers, come to that) are going to be interested in. (I think some military rifles can actually be configured to eject out the left or right, but don't quote me.)

>What's it like shooting left? Lotta brass dodging? Or do you just
>learn how to shoot right?

I've never had any really significant problems with brass ejecting out of the right side of a handgun. The usual shooting position more or less centers the gun anyway, and I'm agnostic about which side the empties fly off to. It's only a real issue with rifles, since your supporting arm tends to be out there where the empties can bounce off it. In that instance, you just wear a long sleeve and put up with it.

Shooting at an indoor range can occasionally be an adventure, whichever direction the empties eject in, because they can bounce off the walls of the lane you're in and come back along unexpected vectors. I've had casings down my shirt collar several times at indoor ranges. It's... unpleasant, but handgun cartridge cases are not actually hot enough to do any serious injury. It's just annoying.

"Learn how to shoot right" is one of those phrases that's either hilarious or punch-in-the-face-inducing to lefty shooters, by the way. Most of us are also left-eye-dominant, and if you want a real good time, try shooting with your off eye and your off hand. It's not like, say, playing golf, or using a computer mouse. :)

--G.
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Weirdly, I knew someone that claimed he occasionally would need to teach a righty to shoot left to get better accuracy. Like all things, YMMV.

That could also be an eye dominance thing. My dad is right-handed, but has to shoot lefty because he's practically blind in his right eye. I'm sure the converse is true for a certain percentage of lefties too.

--G.
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That's kind of what I expected with it, actually. A case of one hand dominant, but not the matching eye.

I'm one of them, which is really obnoxious.
I'm fortunate enough that my right hand is dexterous<1> enough that I can, say, operate the controls on a gun. ISTR that operating a bolt was weird when learning to shoot, but that was...nearly 30 years ago, yea gods.

--
-Pasha <1> You all see what I did there, right?
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

Oh yeah, I should have mentioned bolt-action rifles. There is actually such a thing as a left-handed bolt-action rifle, but even as the kind of lefty that can't get righty scissors to work, I've never minded the right-handed kind. I still shoot them left-handed, but in fact, the bolt on a right-handed bolt-action rifle seems to me to be correctly positioned for a left-handed shooter to work it, because it's my right hand that's over there anyway. To work a left-handed bolt, I'd have to take my left hand off the important bit, which has always struck me as Doing It Wrong. A rare case of a standard configuration arguably working better for a lefty.

Ian at Forgotten Weapons will demonstrate.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

As the designated owner* of a left-handed bolt-action rifle (a Winchester 54), the explanation I received as to why you pulled the bolt with your triggering hand was twofold:
-first, a big/heavy/long rifle is going to wear out your wrist trying to support it that way through a long shooting session. YMMV on how big the gun needs to be and how many shots you need to fire before this becomes a problem, but when I first got acquainted with the 54, it was plenty big enough that I believed this would become an issue.

-second, and again this depends on the circumstance, but in theory by keeping the gun clamped between shoulder and forward arm, you can keep your sight picture intact while chambering another round. In practice, I can't speak to value of this argument, since more times than not I'd end up smacking either the gun or myself in the process of cycling the bolt, but that's the theory anyway.

*I say "designated owner" because the rifle was converted to fit my grandfather, who was short and left-handed; so while Dad is the actual owner of the gun, I am the only one in the immediate family who can actually make use of it.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

I bodged together a couple of annotated photos to illustrate what I mean here. The CZ 82 has as ambidextrous a setup as one is likely to find in a semiautomatic handgun—more so than many, since it has not just a reconfigurable magazine release, as in the Beretta Px4 and various others, but a fully ambidextrous one right out of the box.

Again, as noted earlier, the lack of a slide release on the right side of the gun isn't really an issue for me, since there is another way to do what it does. The only time you really need the slide release in most semiautos is if you want to drop the slide on an empty magazine, and it's not a huge inconvenience to take the magazine out, drop the slide by pulling it back and releasing it (same as you would during a reload), and then put the empty mag back.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I've come across more than a few references to assault/battle rifles with that feature, often being something that can be done in under a minute without any tools. This seems to be especially common with bullpup rifles, where it's not "the hot brass might hit your arm," but "the hot brass will go right into your ear."

"Gimps suffer"(essentially, translations hooray) was the charming comment made by an NCO when I did the military thing. Interestingly, that comment did NOT make an appearance when the complainer was 6'5" and 275, most of which was muscles.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

While I don't know the actual mechanics involved, the Canadian variant of the M16, the C7 is made to have the ejection go left or right, making it rather notable among lefties.

Smith & Wesson's M&P series, among handguns, is supposed to be 'fully ambidextrous' but if that extends to where the brass goes, or if it is 'merely'(not so merely) the controls that can be rearranged for lefthanded shooters, I couldn't actually say.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!