idiot gun writers

[tark]

Sometimes I am so shocked by some of the stupid things I read in gun publications that I wonder if the writer has ever even touched the gun (s) that he is writing about. Just today I read a letter in A major (I will mention no names) publication asking if it was possible to convert a colt pocket pistol from .32 auto to .380. The reply was (again, no names) SURE! Just swap out the 32 barrel and mag and substitute the 380 parts and...... What is wrong with this picture?? A little something called the breech face cutout in the slide.... A .380 will not fit into the breech face cutout on a .32 slide. You would have to change the slide, also, not to mention the recoil spring..... At least an attempt to do as the writer suggested would result in a harmless failure to function.

I have seen an article on the Winchester 97 trench gun where the writer referred to the Left cartridge stop as the bolt release, and then stated that the easiest way to release/ unlock the bolt was to push forward on the slide handle, which would then unlock the action. Not on my 97 it doesn't!!

Some of the advice is downright dangerous, like saying it is ok to convert a Webley Mk IV to 45 ACP. A nice way to invite disaster. The ACP round operates above proof levels for the Webley.

Then there are the old myths that got started years ago, and they have been repeated so many times that everyone is sure they are true. "Why they must be, so and so said so and HE knows what he is talking about" Or "I've read that for years, repeated by so many experts ...why, it MUST be true." But if you ask some of those "experts" they will always give you the same answer....Well...I have read that for years..." Number one on this list, for me, is the myth that 7.62X25 Tok ammo is loaded to higher pressures than .30 Mauser ammo, and must NEVER be fired in a broomhandle Mauser, and if you do that the bolt will shear the bolt stop and come out the rear of the gun....and go through your head....and three trees, a stray dog and an aluminum bodied F-150 and finally bury itself in a block of granite.

Don't tell that to my broomhandle, it has eaten thousands of Tok rounds. The Russians copied the round exactly, there was no need to soup it up. There is no such thing as 7.62 by 25 sub-gun ammo. Ask JohnnyC.

Moving along in this vein, how many times have you heard that the 250-3000 A.K.A the 250 Savage, was the first commercially loaded round to exceed 3000 FPS?? You have read it all your life so it must be true...right?

Wrong. It was the 280 Ross, in 1907 145 grain bullet at 3145 FPS.

See what I mean? What examples of inaccuracy have you noticed?

 

[Wil Terry]

THEY are human beings like all others and subject to all the human frailties, and still are lightyears ahead of all the knuckleheads on the internet and the the crap they spew.
And so it goes...

 

[Vern Humphrey]

One of my favorites is that enemy troops would listen for the ping! as the M1 ejected the clip and charge.

Now I trained on the M1 and even carried one my first tour as an Adviser in Viet Nam. And I guarantee if someone is waiting for the ping! to charge me, he won't make it to his knees before I have that rifle reloaded. But no need for me to hurry -- my squadmates will have already perforated him.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

^Didn't someone ask German combat veterans if they ever heard the "ping" of an M1 Garand clip ejecting? I believe the answer was, after the first shots are fired in combat, you can't hear something like an ejected M1 clip over the noise of battle. The sample of German infantry veterans could not remember hearing it.

Added: (I do remember reading about the M1 clip ping as part of the plot of a 1950s war comic, and my dad who served in New Guinea in WWII shook his head No when I asked about it.)

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Let me put it this way, there may have been some Germans and Japs who charged when they heard the ping! but they didn't live to be interviewed.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

idiot gun writer "...ok to convert a Webley Mk IV to 45 ACP..."

The .455 Webley revolvers ran from Marks I to VI. Mark IV was the last black powder version of the Webley. The Mark V was basically the Mark IV with the cylinder thickened to handle .455 loaded to use either nitrocellulose or cordite smokeless powders. Even the smokeless powder versions of .455 Webley are lower velocity and lower pressure than the standard .45 ACP, so even Webley Mark V and Mark VI revolvers "cut" for .45 Auto are highly questionable for .45 ACP use.

Also the .451 ACP bullet does not engage the rifling of the .455 barrel as well as reloads using .454" bullets and BP at classic Webley levels. Using 45 ACP you are stressing the cylinder and getting poor accuracy. Not OK. Since I have to reload for mine anyway, I wish the importer had left it .455 rather than cut it.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

I wish the importer had left it .455 rather than cut it.

Lok on the bright side -- now you can reload using .45 Auto Rim cases.

 

[Kookla]

I prefer writers who are knowledgeable, on point with their information and who know how to (or has an editor who will) trim the fat. I think the only thing that really bugs me with a bunch of writers these days are the ones who write more to show everyone their wit.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

^Well that is what I do, handload with .45 AutoRim (and use .45 ACP reloads with moon clips). I got loads of .45 ACP empties, and .455 cases are hard to find. But if I had to resell it, it would have more collector's value in original caliber.

 

[Panzerschwein]

I don't like it how they have to go all the way back to the history of the handgonne whenever reviewing something as modern as a Glock!!

Yes, plenty of misinformation in the gun rags.

I don't read them.

 

[rcmodel]

I just read one the other day from a well known 'gun expert' who furthered the myth of unloading your pistol magazines monthly to let the springs 'Rest'!! :banghead:

For the hundredth time.
SPRINGS DON'T REST WHEN THEY ARE UNLOADED!!

rc

 

[jmr40]

All of us posting here are gun writers.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

idiot gun writers

It must be because they are part of the liberal media, right? When gun data in wrong in non-gun publications, it is often blamed on the liberal media, so if gun writers get it wrong, then it must be because they are part of the liberal media as well.

 

[Bobson]

This thread is a joke, right? HAHA I got it!

No? Wow. Talk about your specific audiences. Literally every example you mentioned in the OP is far and away above what I'd consider to be common knowledge. Oh, the 280 Ross in 1907, OF COURSE, who could make a mistake like tha- get serious.

What examples have I found? May as well ask what NASA publications I've read and identified mistakes made by agency astrophysicists.

 

[ontarget]

And 5.56 bullets are DESIGNED to tumble on impact going in the torso and exiting the left big toe.

 

[AlexanderA]

Another often-repeated myth is that during WW2, the British removed the bronze Blish locks from their Thompson submachine guns to make them run better. The truth is that the M1928 Thompson will not function without the Blish lock, because that is what connects the actuator and the bolt. Now, if you grind the "ears" off the Blish lock, instead of removing it, the gun will function, but will beat itself to death with the bolt slamming against the rear of the receiver.

 

[barnbwt]

Yesterday's paid gun writer is today's unpaid internet blowhard. Just sayin'

TCB

 

[rcmodel]

And 5.56 bullets are DESIGNED to tumble on impact

A more popular myth during the Vietnam War was the M-16 bullet tumbled in fight.

So it was already a buzz-saw when it got there!!

I've heard Army NCO's state it in training to a couple hundred troops at a time!!

rc

 

[dranrab]

I don't know why, but I still enjoy holding a magazine. Quality of the content is obviously variable, but I appreciate the break from the computer screen and the look and feel of a magazine. I hope they don't go the way of the do do bird. That said, when I want quality information on something, forums deliver every time. There's a little (and by that I mean a lot) of filtering that needs to be done, but forums deliver. They can be pretty darned entertaining at times too.

 

[Sam1911]

See what I mean? What examples of inaccuracy have you noticed?

Many. But pick up any popular periodical or non-scholarly publication relating to a topic you care about passionately and you'll see the same.

They don't make writers like Skeeter and Cooper and Elmer anymore.



But the thing is, those guys "knew" lots of stuff that isn't really true, too. Sometimes they were unscientific in their observations, sometimes they were mistaken, sometimes they just didn't know when to stay in their own lane. Just like today's crop. "Expert" simply means you've got a bit more experience than the average guy and the hubris to tell people what you think you know. Not that you're the font of all truth.

A concept lost on many MANY people is that "truth" can only ever be found by consulting a lot of sources, researching a phenomenon many ways and many times, and comparing the results you find so you can weed out as much of the junk info you'll pick up as possible. Then you can decide what the truth probably is. That's how science works, and it is how all other areas of study should work, too.

Only religious scholars can read a thing and declare it to be true. Which is why they all agree with each other.

 

[HankB]

I don't like gun writers who take credit for other people's work.

'Way back when American Handgunner magazine was still fairly new, J. D. Jones wrote in his column that his design cast handgun bullets were the first ones made with two crimp grooves so you could load to different lengths.

I guess he never heard of the immensely popular Lyman 358156, a Ray Thompson design from the 1950s that featured two crimp grooves - the rearmost groove was intended to allow a handloader to seat and crimp the bullet farther out so as to use .38 special brass and assemble longer .357-class loads. Standard .38s, of course, used the forward crimp groove.

And of course there are the "wildcatters" that make "improved" cartridges that are virtually identical with earlier efforts . . . like A-Square's .470 Capstick round, which is a twin of the earlier .475 Ackley and .475 Barnes Supreme.

And when Elgin Gates "invented" the .357 Maximum and wrote multiple articles about how great a round it was for IHMSA competition, there was an unbelievable amount of vitriol heaped upon those who pointed out an Australian wildcatter had come up with a nearly identical round years before.

Don't forget Elmer Keith who reported that folks were using his bullets and his loading data to get 1" groups at 100 yards out of S&W M29 revolvers.

 

[joem1945]

I might disagree on the 7.62X25 issue and a broomhandle mauser. Some of the first inported ammo from chezk was loaded to 1650 FPS + (chrono'd it). The later imported sutff chrono'd at 1350 to 1400 FPS. 1650 FPS is a bit hot for a old firearm and I'll not shoot it my broomhandle. I reload .30 mauser to specs for that gun.

 

[tark]

My goof, Carl I meant to say the Webley Mk VI Bobson; they didn't teach you that in high school.?? That the 280 Ross was the first to reach 3000FPS??/ You education was substandard!! LOL

My point is this. There are too many new gun writers out there that know how to write an interesting and entertaining article....and don't know their you know what from a hole in the ground about the guns they are writing about. Their entire database of knowledge is based on what they have read in publications. Myths and untruths that get started, even if honest mistakes, are repeated down through the years until they become accepted as fact.

I used the 280 Ross example simply to show how something that everybody knows to be the truth....isn't. When I first started working in the gun industry 25 years ago, first for Springfield Armory and then Les Baer, I remember how shocked I was to realize that an awful lot of gun writers knew an "awful little" about the guns they were writing about. One (again, no names) didn't know what ACP stood for. Another didn't know that the 45ACP round was introduced in 1905, not 1911.

Here is another classic example that anyone with half a brain would immediately recognize as a little suspect.... A large article on sub-machine guns with specs listed below each gun. Each gun was listed with the magazines capacity, "Plus 1". They all fired from the open bolt. Somebody want to explain to me how this "plus 1" thing works with a gun that fires from the open bolt?? I read in an article where the M-60 machine gun had a real problem with "cooking off rounds" No M-60 ever "cooked off a round" The CAN and DO sometimes run away, but an open bolt gun does not cook off a round.

I have never held or fired a Browning superposed shotgun, but based on all of the things I have read about them over the years, I could write a very interesting and entertaining article about them. And everyone who read the article would probably think that I was very knowledgeable about the subject and.....

See what I mean? There are a lot of writers out there doing exactly what I have just described.

 

[denton]

Only the Almighty gets true information. The rest of us have to manage with approximations. Some of those approximations are better than others.

 

[cheygriz]

I received my CMP surplus M-1 today, and it shot 1/2 inch groups right out of the box!

Riiiiight!

If you shoot a man with a .45 ACP, he's going to go down!

Riiiight!

Most of them write to sell magazines. The outlandish crap they write is designed to sell the client's product advertised on the following page.