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Never underestimate a legend, and that legend is Colt. At first glance you would think that the Colt 901 is just a .308 Win./7.62 NATO version of a standard AR-15, much like any other .308 AR out there, but it is a lot more than that. The Colt LE901-16S is a “Modular Carbine,” which means it can be adapted to any AR-15 platform upper. This isn’t a new concept, because there are of course a whole bunch of different caliber uppers for ARs. The difference is in all the other ones, they have adapted a standard size AR magazine to boutique calibers and cartridge designs. The Colt 901 is different. It can be adapted from .308/7.62, using standard P-Mags, to .223/5.56, using standard AR mags, and back again, in literally seconds. The design uses one proprietary part, and you have to swap out the recoil system. It is that simple, and it works fantastic.

Call it a “loophole.” The federal government says that the guns that killed tens of thousands of Americans in the bloodiest war in our young history aren’t guns, and so they are therefore not included in any of the laws regarding the purchase and possession of firearms as we know them today. You don’t have to fill out a form 4473 to buy one. There is no NICS check. You can transfer them over state lines with no paperwork, and believe it or not, you can even order them in the mail, delivered right to your door like Netflix.

More than not, the decision to buy a new gun comes from inside your heart. Even if you need a duty gun, or you have to pick from a list of allowable weapons for a specific job, most of us are going to buy the gun that feels right to us. For several generations of American gun owners, there is no gun that feels better or more right to buy than a Colt. Last weekend I was listening to Gun Talk Radio, and sure enough, a geezer gun nut called in to let Tom Gresham know that he had finally broken down and bought an AR-15. Why? Because he was finally able to buy a Colt.

Rock Island Auction Company (RIAC) is holding an auction later this month that it’s billing as “The Great Firearms Sale of the Decade.” That’s a pretty bold claim, even for the “nation’s leading auction house for firearms, edged weapons, and military artifacts,” so I did some checking to see what all the hype was about. I wanted to know not only what was going to be auctioned that makes this one so great, but also what the auction is like for sellers and buyers. Was this an auction just for well-heeled collectors and museum staff, or could an ordinary gun owner such as me simply find a deer rifle? Why would someone choose to sell a gun by auction in the first place, and of the major gun auction houses, what should I look for if I was going to sell off a collection?

Once you understand the basics of bullet casting, which we covered in Part One of this series, you are well on your way to a finished bullet you can actually shoot. The next two steps are sizing and lubing the bullet, which we will cover here. I will also go over the basics of “hardness,” which will determine how much pressure and velocity your finished bullet can handle. If you are already a handloader/re-loader, you should be able to load up your bullets after this installment. This is not rocket science as you will soon see, and a lot of the mythology of bullet casting you can pretty much ignore for simple range rounds. Remember we started this series with the concept of “free bullets for life.” The more you complicate anything the more expensive it becomes, so at first, let’s just keep it simple.

If you are serious about guns and learning how they work inside, the Gun Club of America (GCA) may be something you should consider. It is run by the American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI), and for three days in June, the 15th to the 17th, they are going to have their first “GunStock” event ever in Fallon, Nevada. It is a chance for students to meet the instructors that appear in the AGI videos, and learn about a bunch of new subjects. Most importantly, you get to shoot OPG and OPA, “other people’s guns,” and “other people’s ammo.” For members of the GCA the rates for the event are discounted through April 25th, and besides being a great learning experience and a lot of fun, part of the proceeds will be donated to a veterans charity called The Pathway Home.

Isn’t it time to detach the 2nd Amendment from politics? Having the freedom to defend yourself is a fundamental right. Don’t we all agree on that? Who wants to see innocent law abiding Americans live life in fear of crime because the government has taken away their fundamental right to defend themselves? The political climate is perfect right now for politicians to stand up for 2nd Amendment rights for all Americans. Nobody is buying the anti-gun spin and lies anymore. It is time for a real change.
You may have heard news about a new video that has surfaced of Attorney General Eric Holder plotting to change the way people think about guns. Most of the gun news website have been buzzing about it this week, but so far I have yet to find anyone who doesn’t totally miss the point. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Eric Holder is part of the liberal anti-2nd Amendment machine, and that he is just one more of President Obama’s appointees that are completely out of touch with mainstream America. If you actually watch the video though. It will show you how black leaders have become racist, and that black leaders like Eric Holder just plain old don’t trust law abiding black people with guns. Black leaders have created a subculture of disarming victims in the black community, and this has got to stop.

As ammo has gotten more and more expensive over the past few years, a lot of people have begun to consider re-loading, and well they should. Because when you buy loaded ammunition, part of what you are paying for is the bullet you shoot downrange and the powder and primer that burn, and part of that cost is also the brass case. Re-loading, or for the purpose of discussion here, “handloading,” allows you to reuse that brass case for more loaded rounds, thereby saving you money on re-buying the brass. Not all cases are brass of course. These days some cases are aluminum or steel, and these generally cannot be reloaded (That is why steel and brass cased ammo is cheaper). But almost all brass ammunition is capable of being re-loaded, and when you get right down to it, brass ammo was created to reload. Leaving brass on the ground is just plain old wasting, and these days who can afford that?

As much as I love, own and shoot modern shotguns, there is really nothing like a classic side by side doublegun. If you have never tried one, do yourself a favor and go heft one up to your shoulder in a gunshop. You may say eh, no big deal, but you also may fall in love, I warn you. The side by side shotgun has a contagious kind of energy to it, something like a built in romance, for a lot of us anyways.