From the Readers: Comments, Concerns and Questions
May 31, 2023
By Firearms News Staff
We receive a lot of reader responses at the Firearms News headquarters. From insightful questions and comments to full-on fury, we see a bit of everything. As a new initiative for Firearms News, we will be posting some of our favorite letters and notes from the readership each month, and we will also offer our contributors a chance to respond, when fitting. Have a question for a favorite writer? Need some clarification? Do you disagree with an article? Let us know! Each month, we will publish select comments and letters to the Firearms News website. To submit a comment, question or concern, email us at FirearmsNews@Outdoorsg.com .
Trump and Gun Control
To the Publishers and Cordrea,
Congratulations Cordrea you have joined the gang that constantly and for years has attempted to take President Trump down. The President that defended the Second Amendment during his term and got conservative judges appointed to the Supreme Court that have supported the Second Amendment. The one man that can save this country from the downward spiral that Biden/Obama have created and the one President that will continue to support the Second Amendment, you choose to attack. Looking for a job on network news? How about MSNBC?
Do you suppose that Biden will support the Second Amendment? Obama? Newsom? the main stream media? No, but you choose to write your pathetic article as one of their despicable crew. I hope that any money that you received from you slanderous article, you choke on!
TO THE PUBLISHERS,
Codrea Response
Congratulations, Hartner. You managed to misspell my six-letter last name twice right out of the starting gate, meaning you habitually engage in passive/aggressive pettiness when you disagree with someone, or you just don’t read things carefully and understand them. Or perhaps both. You have joined that gang that constantly and for years has attempted to turn a blind eye and excuse whatever President Trump does, no matter how harmful, and instead get mad at those pointing it out.
While he mouthed some “Our beautiful Second Amendment” platitudes, the President did not consistently defend the Second Amendment during his term, and I see you’ve ignored every one of the examples I documented because they’re not what you wanted to hear. As for the judges, the way they’re confirmed is a crap shoot, and hard questions on where they stood on the right to keep and bear arms were never asked. That’s the reason that even though Brett Kavanaugh ended up voting correctly in NYSRP v Bruen, he made some wholly unnecessary infringement concessions that will haunt gun owners for years to come. As for Trump being “the one man that can save the country,” I also addressed that:
“[W]e all need to realize that no politician is going to ‘save us.’ You can’t outsource the duties of citizenship.”
You apparently have other ideas though, and are hinging your freedom on a political savior, especially one who has proven time and again to say one thing and do another. But go ahead and flesh it out: How will he do it alone? More promises he’s powerless to keep? More appointments that turn around and stab him in the back?
If you’d care to scout the terrain a bit before attacking, you’d know better than to ask me about Biden, against whose administration agencies I have filed several lawsuits , Obama, whose administration a colleague and I exposed on Fast and Furious “gunwalking” (and had to drag the media and Congress into it kicking and screaming), and Newsom, who sicced the cops on me and my wife when I dared point out the lawless way he was governing and asked if I was also free to disregard laws I oppose.
So yeah, I take “gun control” personally, whether it comes from prohibitionist Democrats who want them all, or from Republicans who pave the way to that end goal by offering concessions, like Trump did with his “bump stock” ban (paving the way for the current outrages on pistol braces, forced rest triggers, and the like, to ultimately include semiautos), or raising the purchase age to 21, or advocating the flat-out tyrannical “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”
If you’re for any of those things, or don’t want them even questioned, we’re not on the same side, and I’ll oppose you right along with gun-grabbers demanding the same things (always as “good first steps”). Had you actually read my piece, you’d have also seen I addressed your objection:
“Would you rather [insert Democrat gun-grabber here] were president instead? No, of course not. By the same token, we are not doing ourselves or those depending on us to stand for freedom any favors if we deliberately ignore Trump’s willful failures on guns. Because this is going to end one of two ways – strengthening his renewed bid for a return to the White House, or ending any chances of it. If he wins, we need to be able to collectively influence his 2A decisions and judicial appointments and get him to understand what the bad ones are before he makes them. If he loses, we need to be ready to do the same with whomever the Republicans nominate to carry the standard.”
Instead of doing that, taking the information provided and using it in a constructive way to try and effect some positive influence, you’ve chosen to be a sorehead about it. Such blind hostility to the truth reminds me of nothing so much as Hans Christian Andersen’s classic “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where all the sycophants couldn’t gush hard enough about how magnificent they were, because no one dared state the obvious, that he was naked. You’d be mad at the boy who pointed it out.
You know what, Hartner? You can take the truth and use it, or you can further cut yourself off from it, continue to be willfully blind, become even more infuriated by my response, take your ball and go home, and hope I choke even harder. If that’s your choice, I don’t see where unbending defenders of the right to keep and bear arms will be losing all that much. Because the one thing you did not do was demonstrate that anything I claimed was not true.
Ruger SFAR
Thank you for a great review of the new SFAR. I'm very interested in getting one of the new small frame 308 ARs. After reading reading your review of the POF Rouge I thought it was the one, then I read your review of the Ruger SFAR. I do have one question, I read where you said the group sized increased as the temp of the barrel increased, can you give me an indication of the size of the change? How 'bad' was the impact on the group size? I'm a sub to Firearms News and look forward to every issue. Many thanks for the great articles.
Read the complete review of the new Ruger SFAR here
Sasquatch Hunting
Do you think a .357 magnum would take down an 800- to 1,000-pound Sasquatch?
F. Patterson, Healy, Alaska
Firearms News Response
What an amazing question; it's truly one that's never crossed our minds before! Firstly, to anser this question, we will have to make many assumptions. Putting aside the entire debate to the existance of a real sasquatch, bigfoot, wood ape, etc., we have no confirmed reports of the true size and build of bigfoot. Based on various witness reports, it seems more likely that 500 pounds would be the max weight since they walk vertically on two legs. For comparison, a full-grown silverback gorilla weighs around 450 pounds, but they mostly walk on all four limbs. While there are, unfortunetly, more 1,000-pound humans than one would think possible, they are rarely capable of walking, let alone transversing hundreds of miles of dense forest in the American Northwest. 1,000 pounds is simply too much for walking effeciently on two legs, even if one was 7 feet tall. 500 pounds is still quite large, though, and an angry sasquatch would be at least as equally terrifing as an angry bear.
To the matter of a .357 Magnum, we actually have a lot of ballistic data behind the cartridge. In ballistic gel, the .357 usually sees around 12- to 18 inches of penetration, and velocities range drastically based on barrel length and bullet weight. A snubby .357 with a lightweight bullet is right out against a sasquatch, but a 180-grain bullet out of a 6-inch barrel would certainly do you a lot better than strong words. Considering bears again, few bear-country hunters carry a backup gun in .357, though, let alone hunt a bear with it. It simply lacks the stopping power of a big-bore revolver like the .454 Casul or .475 Linbaugh, and even the 10mm Auto is carried more than a .357. So, would a .357 Magnum kill a sasquatch? As always, shot placement is key, and it's more than likely the .357 could kill bigfoot, but would it quickly stop a raging one? It seems a safer bet to side with similar defenses used on bears. Final answer: a heavy-bullet .357 Magnum out of a longer barrel would be better than nothing, but consider a larger cartridge if you need to stop a raging sasquatch.
If you have any thoughts or comments on this article, we’d love to hear them. Email us at FirearmsNews@Outdoorsg.com .
