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Stephen Fischer ⁽¹⁴⁸⁾ United States

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Cling to Your Guns With the Right Gun Safe

Posted Tuesday, November 10, 2009 (14 days 13 hours ago.) Viewed 4 times.

Gun safes offer protection for you and your firearms on many levels. They can protect your firearms from theft and destruction. They can protect your guns from accidentally getting into the hands of children. And, by keeping them out of the wrong hands, they protect your right to keep and bear arms through responsible ownership.

There are many factors that enter into consideration when choosing the right gun safe. Personal preference and level of expectation and service are just a couple things to consider. When a firearm owner wishes to purchase a gun safe, however, it is a good idea for him or her to not necessarily just get the least expensive model available. The safe should make gun owners feel secure. At the same time however, if you're not securing a high value collection, top of the line could be overkill.

The two main choices when shopping for pistol safes are a local dealer or the Internet. Typically, when shopping locally, it can be what-you-see-is-what-you-get in that what dealers have on hand will most likely be all they have for selection. You will either have to choose an on-hand model or walk away empty handed. On the Internet, one can shop around for different prices, features, makes and models easily and most online stores will deliver the safe right to the buyer's door step. It may go without saying, but the World Wide Web is going to have a much greater selection than a local dealer or big box retail store.

Those who are looking specifically for handgun or pistol safes will also find a vast selection online. These will be considerably smaller than a standard gun safe, of course, because handguns are generally much smaller than a rifle or shotgun.

Features shoppers might want to look for in gun and pistol safes are biometric lock control, which can be programmed to recognize only the fingerprints that the owner selects; the size, if the gun owner wants to carry it in a purse or briefcase; and construction.

Firearms safes in general have other features to consider, such as brand, color, dimensions, fire protection level and firearm capacity. This last feature is perhaps the one with the most importance overall in the shopping process since it will most likely determine the size.

Lock type is important in speed of access of your firearms. Biometric type locks and no-eyes keypads can make access fast and easy in event of self-defense scenarios. No-eyes keypads offer nearly as fast access as biometric but tend to cost significantly less. Standard dial-type combination locks may be more economical and sometimes durable than a biometric; however, they sacrifice speed of access in those critical situations.

Level of protection is an important consideration when making your choice. As always, the question is "What is good enough" If you're protecting a valuable firearms collection you'll want to consider a more costly safe. These can not only be more difficult to break into but offer better protection from fire and moisture. If your primary concern is a grab and go thief, a moderate level of security may be more along your lines. Don't forget, though, that you've invested a lot in your binoculars, rifle scopes, laser sights, and other tactical gear. You may want to store them securely as well. If your interest is in protecting your family by not letting your firearms fall into the hands of children, an even lower level of security may be needed. Just remember that children seem to be better at accessing child-proof safety devices than adults are.

After looking over all the makes and models and coming to a final decision on a gun safe, the firearm owner's next decision will likely be where to store it. With such a variety of sizes and colors, you can have the option to camouflage it by matching it to the decor of the house or stashing it in a closet in order to provide the maximum protection by keeping it out of sight. The best way to determine where to store it is to ask your wife. After all, she'll be the one with the final say on it.

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Reflex Sights; Aiming to Please

Posted Thursday, October 29, 2009 (26 days 15 hours ago.) Viewed 34 times.

Reflex sights, also called holographic sights, offer a great alternative to rifle scopes, laser sights, and red-dot sights. They get their name by the way the work; that is, by shining a light beam onto a reflective lens to indicate the location of the target. While looking through a reflex sight, the beam appears to be on the target like a laser sight. This is how the term holographic came to be.

A Reflex sight is used primarily in tactical and self-defense shooting but can also be used for varmint hunting. They use a reflective lens to project a target indicator into the vision of the shooter. This indicator is most often in the form of a red dot but can often be in other configurations, such as circle-dot, crosshair-dot, and combinations thereof. The color can also vary and is most typically red, green, and amber. The light source is generally a LED or laser light. There is some question as to whether a laser-based reflex can cause eye damage and I'm not in a position to make a determination one way or the other. That will be up to you to research. Depending on the type of reflex, they can be used on pistols, rifles, or shotguns. A typical reflex offers a magnification of 1; that is, they don't have any magnification.

Reflex sights have an advantage over lasers in that they don't produce a target-side signature. The laser beam can have advantages in the intimidation factor in self-defense situations but they can also alert an unsuspecting target and allow a person to hide when you'd rather keep them in your sights. Lasers can also startle the target when varmint-hunting. The advantage of laser sights is that they allow the shooter to "shoot from the hip," which can be extremely helpful in self-defense.

A big advantage of reflex sights is unlimited field-of-view (FOV). With certain reflex sights, it is possible to aim with both eyes open. This makes it easy to track a moving target or multiple targets. When using them in this manner, you sight using your dominant eye and focus on your target. The lens fades in your sight picture and the reticle appears to be on the target. It takes a little practice but, you can easily learn to shoot with both eyes and will have a hard time going back to using rifle scopes in near-range situations.

Another advantage of reflex sights is that the eye doesn't need to be perfectly aligned with the front and rear iron sights or with a riflescope. This helps for rapidly acquiring a target and for shooting in unconventional positions. An interesting experiment is to mount your reflex sight and place the rifle in a shooting vice. Then move your head around as you look through the sight. You'll see that the dot follows your eye and stays on target. There may be some aberration on the outer edges of the lens, especially for lower quality sights but in close quarters, that aberration is negligible.

Reflex sighs come in a wide range of price and quality; which generally translates to a range of "This is cool" to "Wow!" They are made by such top names as Trijicon, EOTech, and Burris Fast Fire. You'll have to decide which is right for you. Are you considering combat-like situations where service and reliability is tantamount or are you looking for something just for plinking or varmint hunting? Are you looking for something of heirloom quality or something that can provide a few years of useful service and then you don't care if you have to replace it? Not sure of you'd like a reflex sight? Then spend less and upgrade if it suits your fancy.

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Rifle Scopes: Bigger isn't Always Better

Posted Tuesday, October 20, 2009 (35 days 13 hours ago.) Viewed 39 times.

In many instances bigger = better, but that is not always the case with Rifle Scopes. As tempting as it may be, you don't need a riflescope the size of the Hubble to hit a target one or two hundred yards away. At the same time though, having more than your plain iron sights properly mounted on a firearm will greatly improve your accuracy.

When it comes to choosing rifle scopes, the first rule is to always know what you're paying for. The most expensive rifle scopes may have features you don't necessarily need and may never even use. Sporting needlessly large lenses and inane magnification may offer no real benefit for your style of shooting while weighing so much they can actually reduce the effectiveness of your firearm.

The terminology surrounding rifle scopes can be a bit confusing many people. Some of the terms for rifle scopes seem designed to create confusion. But, if you know the basics, you should be able to find what you need at a reasonable price. The basic information you want to look at for a riflescope is magnification, objective, and reticle.

It's fairly easy to determine the magnification and objective diameter of rifle scopes just by looking at them. You'll typically see some numbers that follow the format of 3-9x42mm. In this example, 3-9x designates the magnification range, 3 times power to 9 times power. The number 42 designates the objective lens diameter in millimeters. It is possible to have fixed magnification rifle scopes. In that instance, the designation will appear like 3x42mm.

Magnification is discussed in terms of power. Power is the factor by which you are visually reducing the distance between yourself and the target. For example, if the magnification is 5X, targets 100 feet away will appear as though they are 20 feet away. In other words, a 10X magnification will make it seem like you are 10 times closer to your target. If the target were 100 feet away, you will see it as clearly as you could were it 10 feet away.

Don't be fooled by the lure of an ultra high powered Riflescope. The higher the power is, the lower the field-of-view. The field-of-view, as the name implies, describes the amount of sight picture available when looking through rifle scopes or other optics. A limited field of view can make it very difficult to acquire your target. Remember, if you will, being a child and pretending to use an empty paper towel roll as a telescope? Do you remember how difficult it was to actually find anything that way?

The objective lens is the light gathering lens of rifles scopes and is typically measured in millimeters (mm). As it is the light gathering lens, it is important to have a larger diameter objective if you'll be using your riflescope in low light conditions and especially under higher magnifications.

The next thing you'll want to look at is the reticle. The reticle is the aiming pattern that you see when looking through the riflescope. There are any number of reticle patterns available based on function. The most common type of reticle is crosshairs and a slight modification to the crosshair pattern called duplex. The scope of this article is too narrow to go into all possible reticles and their uses.

When buying Rifle Scopes , don't forget the mounting hardware. Many rifle scopes will come with rings; however they may not be compatible with your mount. In order to properly mount your riflescope, you'll need to know the firearm that you are mounting it to and the tube diameter of the scope. Then you'll need rings and a mount to match the two. If you're having trouble making the fit, be sure to ask your firearms professional and they'll be glad to help.
rifle scopes

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