Looking for Zombie killing options
Do search for gun clubs and shooting ranges in your State to find out if anyone is holding a Zombie shoot. They usually occur in the September to October months. Having some good tactical clothing that will securely hold your gear. The Eotac Style 201 pants are my favorite because they hold 6- 30rd PMAGS and they are easy to run in. Tactical vests like the Style 101 are not heavy and don’t make you feel like you are wearing a flak jacket. There is a time and a place for different types of tactical vests, but mobility is important. You may want to try getting your magazines loaded up with all of your gear and then try running 100yds with it and see what it feels like and if stuff starts to fly out of your pockets. Mobility is extremely important.
There seems to be a new craze in competition shooting in recent years. I’ve seen more high school boys coming home from class with Zombie survival guides, the recent 28 Days later type movies and the doomsday virus outbreaks. I guess IDPA has lost some traction to the present generation, but I’ve attended a few Zombie survival competitions and they were very good training events. The best thing about it was the amount of tactical gear that I watched fail, and the number of really novice mistakes people made. Out of the 5 stages I attended, there was 1 stage that we saw about 18 firearms go down. About half of those were AK variants and they were mostly magazine related. Some guys never knew how hard it was to do a tactical reload on an AK if there was a round in the chamber and a fully loaded 30rd magazine. People found out what happens after firing off the 1st round and the magazine falls out.
I first stepped into the world of tactical carbines after years of toting around an M16A2 for close to 10yrs. We basically had to clean and maintain our firearms daily when deployed and I often wondered what we might have been able to do during the day if we didn’t have such a high maintenance rifle. Looking back, I realized there wasn’t much else to do and this was something that we did to just occupy time. The M16A2 is not a very clean running firearm, but it can go for hundreds if not thousands of rounds without cleaning if it was lubed correctly from the beginning. In all of my years of service with the M16A2, and the years standing next to operators with AR15 rifles, I’d say 90% of malfunctions were bad magazines or improperly loaded, and bad ammo. The next was improper lubrication. It’s been a few years since I’ve been on the range during hunting season, but It was about 5yrs ago that I ran into an AR15 owner that said the key to running an AR15 reliable is to run it dry. Well, if you own an AR15 and you think this is true, I can’t help you.
The Mini 14 was hands down the gun that was hit the hardest by the AWB in the 1990’s. Ruger is now making 20rd and 30rd magazines available to the public and those magazines were going for close to $100 at one point in the later 1990s’. There is nothing wrong with having magazines for firearms that are not the best, sometimes it’s better to rotate through cheap magazines and practice malfunction drills or just toss them when they were out. You don’t want to use your carry mags all the time because if you are shooting through hundreds of rounds of ammo using the same mags that you use for your daily carry, you may find out at the wrong time that the springs need to be replaced. I picked up a good supply of Mil-Spec 1911 7rd magazines that I rotate through my guns and save the Wilsons Combat Magazines for the serious shooting. When the mil-spec mags start jamming too much, I just toss them.
And the answer is no, we do not, so why do people expect us to be able to shoulder the same size rifles or grip the same size handguns comfortable? Even if you’re a guy, you’re not all built the same, and luckily the military has caught on to this. If I had a nickel for every WWII vet I know that made a comment on how big the Garand was and how many of them had trouble shooting one, I’d be rich. The M1 Garand is a very accurate and powerful rifle, but not everyone could hand them. If you field a rifle of the same caliber today, and allowed people to adjust the stock for their comfort, recoil issues go away.
There is another issue that I see come up when taking new students to the range. I usually bring various military style rifles with me to get people to adjust to recoil and realize the common military style weapons that exist in the world. Many of these individuals, after a day on the range tend to select the gun that fit them the best. When I first got into shooting rifles, I started out with all of the military surplus firearms that came into the Country in the early and mid 1990s. There may never be another time where Soviet style weapons are imported into this Country. The military warehouses got cleaned out after the fall of the Soviet Empire and American gun owners were the beneficieries.
There area a lot of good upgrades one can do to a firearm, a fighting rifle should be customized to fit an operator. Advanced Technology makes some quick and easy upgrades for your shotgun or carbine that can give you better grip or balance. Shotgun shell holders on the buttstock or riding side saddle is a practical tactical upgrade you can do on your remington 870. The fiberforce stock for the MAK90 is a way to legally get around some firearm bans and are a big step up compared to the stupid thumbhole stocks. Attach a rifle sling that fits yoru purpose from Blue Force Gear, they come in 1 point, 2 point and 3 point attachements. Minor firearm modifications make need to be done to attache rifle slings, but do some research on various rifle sling configurations to see what works for you.
In the early 1990s there was a surplus of military style rifles coming into the Country. There were goofy thumbhole stocks to avoid violating gun laws or cheap parts for kits. Many of these rifles had pretty ugle stocks especially many of the rifles coming in from China or Egypt. If you have one of those MAK90s or Maadis that works great, but looks like crap, you might want to upgrade your stock with a synthetic. Many of these stocks are made in the US and can be considered US Parts to add to your legal alterations of your gun.