Recap of a post in GD

[krispos42]

32. Continued!

But since you brought up the reliability thing let's talk about that, shall we? There are no standards for firearm reliability. None, nada, zip, zilch and any other name you can give to less than none. However the accepted 'goal' or 'aspiration' is to fire 5000 rounds with no more than 20 misfires (aka failure). The Armitix iP1 was tested to 10,000 rounds with less than 10 failures. (This 'standard' is from comments made by the chief design engineer for H&K for over 30 years.)

Given that background would you fly in a commercial airliner if every 250 landings the wheels didn't come down? Or if it were an Armitix plane one of every 1000 landings? Yet you're perfectly ok with something that you believe you need to protect your life that operates at that reliability level? What the hell's wrong with you?

Reliability is of course subjective. I have a .22 revolver that is reliable, but after about a hundred rounds there is enough soot around the cylinder that it starts to affect the force required to fire the gun. There's no way I can fire 5,000 rounds without cleaning the gun, even though if there's a failure to fire it will be because of ammunition flaws, not gun flaws. So when they say they fired 10,000 round through it with less than ten failures, I'm going to guess that it was over the course of several days, with at least a quick cleaning at regular intervals. Nothing wrong with that; gunpowder soot will build up and make the mechanicals sticky. I'm sure that when H&K or Walther do their reliability tests, they just don't shoot the gun until something breaks or the barrel melts. It's almost certainly broken up into sessions, with the testers keeping track of the running totals.

It's a complicated issue. The Armitix pistol is a .22, which has a very mild recoil. Pistols that are useful for self-defense generally are at least three times as powerful as a .22, and can go as much as six times as powerful. Obviously this generates far more velocities and thus energies on the mechanical parts, as well as burning more gunpowder. This increases the chances of mechanical failure (broken spring, broken extractor, etc.) as well as residue-induced jams. And springs in handguns do have to be replaced periodically because they do weaken through use.

But many, perhaps most failures, in a semiauto pistol are from magazine issues. A magazine with a weak spring can easily cause jams, as can a magazine with feed lips bent out of position. Other have to do with poor extraction. Neither are due to the firing mechanism working or not. So the firing mechanism itself may be very good but crappy magazines or a weak/worn extractor can make the gun as a whole unreliable.

And real world reliability is different. Cops carry (based on observation) 3 magazines for their handguns: one in the gun and two on the belt. At most, that's about 52 rounds before they're empty (17 rounds per magazine, plus one in the chamber). So to the cop, their priority is that the gun can shoot those 52 rounds with zero failures because, god forbid, they get caught up in something terrible. They probably won't care that much if, after 300 rounds, their pistol starts having the occasional hiccup and needs a quick cleaning or oiling.

He got so many DEATH THREATS that he sent the inventory back. Death threats? Yeah, that's the way gunners react to anything they don't like. The NRA and many gun owners say it’s a government Trojan horse intended to open the door for laws that will mandate “smart” technology in new guns in order to identify gun owners – a notion that’s widely seen by gun owners as a threat to Second Amendment rights.

So if you sometimes think there's a culture war against gun owners remember DEATH THREATS every time gunners get upset. I personally think that's a culture worth going to war against.

Well I certainly don't endorse death threats. But here's the thing... your "culture war" is doing the opposite of what you want. Your side's signature legislation is pandering pablum that won't stop AR-15 or AK-47 sales, but does increase gun sales while reinforcing that, yes, Democrats are coming for your guns.








I mean, your side is REALLY GOOD at getting new firearms made and sold! Handgun and rifle sales under Obama DOUBLED! That's impressive, but probably the opposite of what you wanted to accomplish. It's almost like blaming all gun owners for the actions of a few is counter-productive or something.

Anyway, I checked out the Armatix website. They haven't expanded their pistol line, and there hasn't been any news there for about 5 years. Nice website, though. I'll stand by my statement I made upthread. If they want to prove their guns in the real world, they have to get publicity, and the best way to do that that I can think of it with competitive shooting.

Make a 9mm version, put together a squad of about 3-4 guys, and have them start shooting competitively. Take lots of pictures and videos, post them on YouTube and other social media sites. Wear flashy team apparel. Show that in the real world they can shoot just as fast and accurately as with regular guns, and that the "smart" part doesn't interfere with with shooting at all.

Oh, and this 9mm needs to be drastically upgraded to be competitive with dumb guns. The sights need to be replaceable, there needs to be an accessory rail option, and there needs to be a way to mount a pistol-sized red-dot scope. At a minimum. All the big boys are doing it.

I did a quick Google search of Armatix videos, thinking I could see the pistol in action, and noticed that there are reports of the smart system being bypassed with strategically-placed magnets.