My understanding is that the SP2340 can be converted from either .40 S&W or .357 SIG to a 9mm, but it requires changing barrels, magazines, and recoil springs. It’s not very complex or anything, but it does cost enough that ya might as well just get another pistol. I bought mine as a .40 and bought the .357 SIG barrel. I like being able to switch calibers to suit my mood, and the .357 SIG is a loud, powerful cartridge that turns heads at the range.
But, like I noted above, they’re expensive calibers. Factory ammo for a .357 SIG costs about $15 for 50 carts of the cheap stuff, and quality ammo costs around $18, around double what I might spend on a box of good 9mm ammo.
Y’all know any good internet dealers of bulk ammunition?
Max Torque: There are several suppliers of bulk ammo, but the limiting factor for buying from most of them is the transportation costs. Shipping, handling, and DOT fees can be expensive unless you are going to buy a large quantity of ammo. Best advice is to use that money to purchase yourself a good reloading press/kit and load your own ammo. Components are inexpensive and readily available and you can “custom load” for your particular firearms. Reloading is also very inexpensive - a fraction of what you would pay for even cheap ammo. I haven’t checked lately, but you could try a search for Black Hills Ammo, PMC, or Midway if you feel you must buy loaded ammo. Of course, you can also buy bulk ammo from the biggies (Remington, Winchester, Federal, et al.), but you are limited to a small selection of bullet weights and bullet styles. If you shoot a lot, reloading is the only way to go.
Vestal Blue: Since you are in the military (BTW, thank you for your service to your country), I probably don’t need to remind you that some pistols (semi-auto handguns) can be made safe - that is, unable to be fired - by removing the loaded magazine from the gun. In this manner, the gun can be safely stored in a convenient place with a round in the chamber. The magazine is stored in a separate secure place until needed. When the magazine is inserted in the pistol, the gun becomes operational once more. This is because most pistols employ a “magazine safety” that disconnects the firing mechanism when the magazine is removed. If you are uncomfortable with a chambered round in the pistol, simply leave the loaded magazine out of the pistol with the chamber empty and insert the magazine and rack a round into the chamber when necessary.
Boris B: The only one who can make you ashamed is you. I face people that have an anti gun attitude all the time. The last woman I dated absolutely hated guns and thought that that only people who should have guns are the police and mountain men like - and I swear on my mother I am not making this up - Ted Kazynzski. I think she used Ted as the only example of a “mountain man” she could think of but technically he never shot anyone. During our relationship I was never apologetic about shooting and I think she knew she couldn’t shame me if she tried.
UncleBeer: The Buckmark is sweet. I’ve got a 5.5" standard model and have been tempted to trade up to the target model. Give the standard model a try though if you absolutely don’t need the scope mounting rib. The trigger on mine was 2.5lb right out of the box and it’s a honey to shoot. Right now I’m concentrating on the Anschütz 64MP rifle I just got. I can’t go shooting again until after this weekend’s camping trip but I might give a go at a local benchrest match this month. With the 24X Weaver varminter scope the bastard weighs more than my M1 Garand but it will make little cloverleaf holes in the target all day. The trigger is absolutely the best thing I have used short of a friend’s electronic Walther free pistol .
radar ralf: I don’t think the magazine disconnector is a satisfactory way of making a weapon safe or disabled. Magazine disconnectors are the exception rather than the rule as well. I’m single and live alone but all my weapons are locked in a cabinet unless I’m actually using, cleaning or carrying one.
As for reloading don’t go into it lightly as the capital costs of proper equipment are quite high. I use Dillon equipment which is kind of pricey but I can crank out 500 rounds of .45 ACP in about an hour and a half. Some weapons such as Glock void the warranty with handload/reload ammo.
It’s all a matter of where you are, I guess. In my area the newspapers run pictures of people with the bucks they got during deer season, and lists of young hunters who have gotten their first–and a surprising number of these (if you didn’t already know) are females. I recall one from last year–a 13-year-old girl with her first buck. The blurb mentioned that she got her first doe the year before, at age 12. Needless to say, you can happily discuss guns and shooting around here with just about anybody over the age of 10, male or female. (Just don’t assume the 12 and 13-year-olds know less than you about the subject–they may know more.)
But I know The Look, alright. I first came across it in college, when I declined to hold my tongue about occasional assertions that people who owned guns were Evil Nutzoids. I gained a bit of a reputation as being a “gun nut” (I think the emphasis was on “nut”) and some people suspected I had all sorts of implements of destruction stashed in my apartment. I didn’t actually have a gun there–I felt no need for one–but I didn’t correct the impression.
Then my last year a number of us decided to live together in a townhouse. One of the prospective members of the group had a concern, though–he asked me to guarantee that I would never bring a gun into the townhouse. I had no plans to do so, but I declined to guarantee any such thing–being phobic about such things was his problem, not mine. He insisted; I still refused. He said either I guaranteed no firearm would ever cross the threshhold, or he was pulling out. I waved bye-bye to him, and we found a replacement in about two hours. And I never did have a gun there.
(The guy we replaced him with was both pro-gun and gay. Now there’s someone who would know what The Look meant from all sides.)
So keep on keepin’ on, Boris. Stick to your guns (as it were), and you’ll eventually find the people you’re looking for.
(But do not under any circumstances tell people you post on the SDMB–then they’d know you were weird.)
Padeye: You are right about the Dillon equipment (what do you have the - RL550?) being somewhat expensive (and a bit too complex for a beginner, in my mind), but a good single-stage press and basic equipment can be purchased in kit form for around $100. I have two RCBS presses: the Rock Chucker and an old RC jr. My single-stage presses operate a little slower than your progressive unit, but with two presses set up for the same caliber, I can crank reloads out fast enough to suit my needs.
Since all mechanical devices are prone to failure, I understand your concern for the magazine disconnector - that’s why I included the part about keeping the loaded magazine in a separate, secure spot from an unloaded (no round chambered) pistol. A little slower, but lots faster than trying to stick rounds into the cylinder of a revolver, for most folks, under stress.
red_dragon60: Although an RPG is a bit much, you can own a .50BMG! Still over the top for most uses, though.
Looks like this is turning into another gun-debate thread. Only this debate is whether this firearm is more desireable than that one!
You’ll all excuse me if I skipped all that, since I a) don’t know dookie about guns and b) have no real interest in hunting/shooting stories.
But hey, it’s your party, knock yourselves out. Someday there will be a thread about ragtime piano music or barbershop quartets, and I’ll regale you with my interests.
Still, I was hoping to see some advice for Boris along the lines of “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”. Come on, you gun nuts! Surely some of you have had reason to squelch The Look! Let’s give ol’ Boris some ammo! Uncle Beer, you’re erudite, pitch in, here! Radar Ralf! Let’s hear it! Padeye, speak up!
This is a pretty interesting thread, even so, if only to show Boris he’s not alone.
I’ve thought about doing the reload thing, but there’s a major limiting factor: I live in an apartment, and therefore 1) space is at a premium, and 2) I don’t have a really good place (like a garage or storage room) to store powder. It seems a little irresponsible to me to store it on the shelf in my closet.
Radar, I have the XL650. I have some of the goodies but not the electric case feeder yet. I feed about 20 .45ACP cases at a time into the plastic tube and it automatically feeds them into the shell plate. The 650 has an extra station for the powder check alarm. It senses the rough level of the charge and an alarm goes off in the unlikely event of a double or missed charge.
Before this, I had an old RCBS Jr. for rifle, mostly .223, and a Dillon Square Deal B for handgun. Progressive is the way to go if you want to load any serious volume of ammunition.
Dave, I’m not sure if snappy comebacks are a good idea. It’s usually a mistake to get into an argument or debate with an anti gun person on a personal level and just makes things worse. When the topic came up I assured my friend that I was responsible and safe with my firearms and I would never have one on me or in my vehicle when she was around without telling her first. I also offered to show her how to use firearms safely if she ever wanted but that I wouldn’t be offended if she didn’t take me up on the offer. She didn’t but others have and have benef1itted from the experience. When I was at Biosphere 2 we often took our Columbia University interns to the Pima Pistol club. All of us in the I.S. department were members and we taught out interns that Arizona was a whole lot different than the upper Manhattan campus they came from.
You may be right, Padeye. sigh It’s too bad, because not saying or doing anything only validates the moron who’s doing The Look.
Maybe if Boris offered to take that person to a firing range, at least he’d seem more friendly…nah, scratch that, they’d only figure he was some zealot who got a rush out of making liberal weens squirm.
Damn. I hate it when rude, ignorant people get the last word.
Excuse me; I’m gonna drop in, be the skunk at the party, then leave. But I didn’t expect to see another damned gun thread in MPSIMS, and I didn’t think this was one until I opened it - otherwise I’d have probably skipped it. So I apologize in advance, but I’m still gonna challenge a couple of things that have been said here.
True. But it empowers the user of that tool in a way that makes the user potentially lethal at a distance.
If we were a country of peaceful, honest people and armed criminals, then it would make sense for the peaceful honest people to arm themselves against the criminals. Unfortunately, the law-abiding ones among us are neither peaceful nor honest, as a general rule. And when they mix guns and their own emotions, they turn lethal often enough to account for more killings than the criminals do. (This has been covered in other gun threads; I believe the cite was to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, but I’m not gonna look it up right now.)
And did Harris and Klebold get their guns from some criminal underground, or from the sea of legal guns surrounding them?
Sorry, Boris, but you’re just going to have to get used to The Look. To indicate disapproval is a human right, and they’re using it on you. It’s their right. It’s been an effective tool of movements of conscience in other times and places, and I suspect it may do well in this particular context. Conservatives have spoken highly of this technique, and on this point, they’re right. It violates no rights; it’s both libertarian and communitarian at the same time, which is pretty impressive when you think about it.
I think, in this case, you’ll have to either keep quiet about your gun hobby amongst relative strangers, or develop a thick skin. Good luck.
Boy do I know the look!
I WEAR FUR…and I’m tired of being ashamed of that, too. I’m afraid to wear my coat to most public places because of the reaction by the masses. If there is anything more wasteful than killing animals to wear them, it’s got to be killing animals to leave them in your closet.
dragonlady: WTG!!! Here in Alaska, we have deal with both problems - private ownership of firearms and furs!!! If you enjoy wearing furs, you really should try to visit Alaska, especially during the annual Fur Rondy. Check this out: http//www.alaska.net/~furrondy
Ralf, thank you. Although retired now, it was ever my privelege to serve.
As for your suggestion, yes, as you surmised, I know.
However, my wife wants nothing to do with a firearm in the house, and I honour her wishes. And, I never have to load a sword, and yes, I can use one.
Really? Which kind? katana, sabre, foil…
Kendo for me. I’ve tried shooting, but I just didn’t find it to be very satisfying.
As for the whole pro/anti gun thing, I have no particular feelings about guns per se, but I do believe in fairly high regulation of them just because people and guns are a lot more numerous and complex then it was a couple of hundred years ago.
Society is more densely packed and our rules have to change.
And my NRA buddy who goes around saying “An armed society is a polite society” will just have to learn to accept that.
A “human right”? If this were a human rights issue, I would not have posted it in the Mundane Pointless Stuff forum. It is also their “human right” to treat me like slime, recommend that I be psychiatrically evaluated, hate my guts, and generally make moutains out of molehills.
Both libertarian and communitarian at the same time … sounds kind of like an electronic bulletin board. Except that on BBSs, dirty looks don’t count for squat - you have to express yourself verbally. But The Lookers can’t do that - this is not a “movement of conscience”, it is a blind, sub-rational fear which generates comtempt.
To be fair, I have discussed this with some of my gun-fearing friends. They can form grammatically-correct sentences on the matter, but they still make no logical sense. E.g., Hoplophobe #27 So, Boris, how do you know so much about guns? Boris Uhh, I don’t know. I read about them and remembered it. Hoplophobe #27 Why did you read about them? Boris Uhh … I just found it entertaining. Hoplophobe #27 Why would you be interested in something like that? Boris I don’t know. Nor do I know why I am interested in anything else, or why I am not interested in anything. Hoplophobe #27 Yeah, but guns are designed to kill people. Boris What about Sporting Clays models? Hoplophobe #27 That’s a small fraction, and those aren’t all the ones you’re interested in. Boris Do you hate me, or not? Hoplophobe #27 I don’t hate you, I just can’t figure out why you are the way you are.
Is there any possible way anyone could have gotten anything out of that discussion? Replace “guns” with “wine” (Hoplophobe #27 is a wine affcionado) and “kill people” with “make people drunk” and you might see how I feel. No. There is no way Hoplophobe’s line of questioning could ever have revealed anything. Yet it happens, again and again, and it is fascinating. Is the attempt really to reveal anything, or is it an attempt to humiliate someone?
Yeah well, I’m gonna need it. My most recent run-in with The Look was in a career development class where they make a big point of being open and accepting. They asked each student/client to tell about all of her or his big passions, no matter how eccentric they might be. Collect dust bunnies from under hotel beds? Great! Write palindromic novels? Super! Shoot clay pigeons? WE ARE BLASPHEMED!
So yeah, I closet myself as much as possible, dodging questions and hiding gun magazines. But sometimes the truth is pried out of me by some sucker-punch artist.
Do I deserve what I get for being open?
I too used to give it. Big time. Oh boy, did I ever hate guns and the nutjobs that owned them.
Then I met my first husband. “I hunt,” he said. “Deal with it.” I eventually changed my stance on hunting, and learned to cook an excellent venison roast.
But I just couldn’t get up off my ideas about handguns. Cops and military personnel needed handguns. That’s it. Anyone else who owned them was an idiot.
Then I started hanging out here.
Prior to coming here, I had never met anyone who owned guns, except the aforementioned first husband. He didn’t have handguns, though. I started reading posts by people who own them, and use them responsibly. I came to understand, and believe deep down, that while guns are not my cup of tea, most gun owners are fine, upstanding people who obey the gun laws on the books. I came to believe that we don’t really need more gun laws–we need better enforcement of the thousands of laws already in existence. And the knee-jerk “ban all guns” reactions after tragedies occurred started to really piss me off. I live in Flint, which is right next door to Mt. Morris, where that six-year-old boy shot his classmate. It was nuts here for weeks.
I don’t give The Look anymore. People have their things that they like. Guns are inanimate objects. They don’t do anything until someone makes them. Most people use them correctly. Some don’t. The ones that don’t need to be punished severely. Punishing the gun is stupid. Punishing the responsible millions that use guns properly is utterly pointless.
If you’re feeling frisky, though, and really want to see The Look, screw up your courage and tell someone you don’t believe Jesus Christ is your personal savior. HOO BOY! You ain’t seen NOTHIN’ 'til you’ve done that!
and yes, I can use one.