D9 looking cool with a STI race gun.

 Over the last few years we have built and provided firearms for clients all over the world and as always we are grateful you chose D9Firearms.  This range report is a testament to the character of the individuals we work with and to the friends we’ve developed.  As some of you may remember in our archives the rifles we sent to New Zealand for Paul and his wife (yes friends listen up, his wife), and he provided us with some awesome photo’s of him and his mates lighting up the hill side with some 1000m shots.  (Of course there were sheep in the photos, its NZ.)

Well Paul contacted us a few weeks ago and told us he would be in Columbia, MO for the Bianchi Cup Tournament, in Columbia, MO.  Paul and his family along with his good friend Richard and his daughter were all competing in the Bianchi Cup.  A family that shoots together stays fricken alive when all hell breaks loose.

Since he was so close we invited him over to Overland Park for some range time, BBQ, and naturally adult beverages.  Unless you’re some kind of limp wristed tofu eating nut job environmentalist with male nurse tendencies, who wouldn’t drive two hours for this.

As we mentioned, we have a vast array of very good friends.  Since this little gathering was going to be more then 2 or 3 people we couldn’t go to our normal range for a little range time.  Additionally, it was also going to include machine guns and we needed to get away from your typical Overland Park, dry bulb, hayseed, what do you need a machine gun for just give me my musket types.  (Sorry Billy Bob Joe if we’ve offended you, ah not really.)

We issued a request to our news letter subscribers to see if anyone would be interested in hosting a small gathering of shooting enthusiasts.  Since we limited this event to pistols or pistol caliber rifles we didn’t need much space.  Within 2 hours of the request hitting the wire we had one confirmed and two possible options.  So first and foremost Thank You Aaron, Bret (and Mary his wife for hosting the dinner afterwards), and Shawn for rallying and helping us bring some of that good down home hospitality to our friends from down under.

As with any outing we always lay down range rules, which are very germane to these events.  Although it seems high risk to the Owner of the property and to D9, our strict adherence to the rules, diligence, and the quality of people that are invited to this type of event, helps keep it safe and enjoyable for everyone.  In this particular case the participants had more to fear then the Owner & D9 since our range was out in the sticks, we had a back hoe on hand, and real friends help you hide the bodies.  Not really, but you get the message, don’t F up.  Again, thanks to everyone who served as the range master.

Needless to say it was not the most opportune day to head out to a field considering it had been raining most of the week and the day of.  Fortunately the resourcefulness of the hosts, they secured a couple of canopy’s & a Gator.  Also, we can’t exclude the individuals who came out in the mess, but since we didn’t invite any pussies it was no big deal.  As you will see from the photo’s we stayed on a close 5 yard range.  But regardless everyone ran their pistols and a couple of shotguns.

If this little outing is any indication of how well armed US citizens are, then my guess is if the blue helmets try to disarm us, they’re going to be in for a world of hurt.  However, even if we were armed with pitchforks and rocks they would come to know our resolve.  Don’t F&$% with our guns. 

The day’s events were somewhat curtailed by the rain, which primarily limited us to a shorter shooting range.  However, most pistol shooting for personal protection is usually done in this small arena, Paul and company have their race guns sighted for 50yd so they looked at us a little funny.  Regardless everyone started breaking out there hardware and loading magazines.  My guess we had enough ammunition and firearms to sufficiently win the Alamo (a little Tex Mex lingo, another lesson to those open borders advocates, “We did it once, we can sure as hell do it again”).

As with any of our shoot outs everyone is encouraged to let others shoot their firearms.  (This is D9’s subliminal plot to sell more guns.)  This is one of the best environments to do this since you can actually shoot the gun and get a feel on the recoil, trigger, how it fits in your hand and just an overall impression.  This is far more practical than anything myself or some other industry hack could write about a gun and tell you how great it is.  Additionally, we’ve found that our clients also get exposure to firearms & techniques that they may not normally have been interested in or known where to start.

Susan testing Bret’s 44Mag.

Once the fun began everyone began cycling through a few mags with their favorite pistols.  After a few rounds of this people did what was natural, “Hey Mine is Bigger Then Yours”.  Of course our good friend Bret won this contest with his Ruger Super Redhawk 44Mag.  Everyone wass going a long shooting their 9s, 40’s, 45’s & 38 Supers and then Bret says make way children dad’s coming through.  There is always something impressive no matter how big yours is, when a guy whips out his 44Mag and lights off a few it makes a pronounced statement, “I have a Big One”. 

Paul and company gave us an overview of their competition guns and few stances and shooting positions.  They shoot modified 1911’s by STI in 38Super.  To begin with the STI is one of the premier 1911 manufacturers and their basic model starts around $2.5k.  These pistols cost in excess of $4k USD.  As with any competition gun, it is totally customized to fit the shooter and is not designed to win a beauty contest.  If you notice near the muzzle the “L” shaped bracket with gauze tape on it.  This bracket is for one of the heats where the shooter can shoot from a supported position.

Looking closer at the rear of the one pistol, the rear slide is totally ported and you can see the firing pin spring and firing pin.  The ports are for weight reduction.  The red dot is mounted on a custom base designed and developed by a local shooter and mechanical engineer Warren from Protocall Design.

During competitions the shooters speed shoot from right to left, left to right, and then straight on.  This base has a speed lever that offsets the base slightly to lead the target for which ever direction you’re shooting.  This is slick.  On Paul’s STI, he mixed a concoction of sand paper sand and epoxy and coated his grip with this.  There are other modifications but as you can see these are awesome pistols and they know how to use them.

Our good friend George (Alias) and I broke out a variety of machine guns.  We had a BT-9 which is Swiss made submachine gun, HK MP5 sear gun, Mac 10, Sten MKII and even “BB” machine gun for one of the youngsters.

As you can see from various smiles the weather did not ruin it completely.  We finally wrapped up about 5PM and headed into town over to Bret’s house for some dinner and adult beverages.   On Sunday I received about a dozen emails thanking us for putting this together, but the real thanks goes to Aaron, Bret, & Shawn who did most of the heavy lifting to get this pulled together.

Again we want to thank everyone for coming out and having a great time and we will be doing this several more times this summer.

D9

 VIDEO COMING SOON

We had another excellent range night out for a few of our friends & clients whom we affectionately refer to as D9Firearms - Family of Friends (D9-FOF).  First of all this does not have any underlying tones of homosexuality or male nurse flip boy crap like that, it is a straight forward description of like minded, law abiding, gun toting citizens, who happen to choose D9Firearms for their firearms needs, and individuals we consider our friends.

Needless to say the other night was no different in enjoying some camaraderie and practicing some CQB techniques.  Although I am far from an expert in this arena, I have had enough training to be dangerous and combined with a couple of the other shooters, it provided everyone with the opportunity to bust off some caps, work with their gear, break a sweat, and in general get some trigger time to be prepared for suppressing felonious activities, prairie dogs, terrorists, nazi’s, drug running illegal’s, and other nefarious types.

We worked on a couple of basic exercises that are the building blocks to more advanced tactical maneuvers.  The first part of the exercise was sighting in.  In CQB, your typical range is 0 – 15yd, we set up at about 7yd.  Before starting our exercise we worked on our rules of engagement and safety. Our gear consisted of an AR-15 style rifle and a backup/secondary handgun.  Although our focus was on the use of the rifle, you have to be prepared for a failure and be able to react, stay in the fight, and stay alive.

We ended up having 4 teams of two, which allowed one spotter for each shooter.  The spotter’s function was to observe, assist, and provide comments on techniques.  (Although most were all novices, the spotter’s primary purpose was to maintain safety of his/her shooter.)    

In our next exercise, we worked on the double tap process.  This basically consisted of getting into a ready position, cheek on the stock, eyes scanning, safety on, and trigger finger on the receiver.  The caller would issue one of four basic commands we set for our rules which were; clear, ready, gun, and safe.  Upon hearing gun each shooter would level their rifle, safety off, deliver a double tap and go back to ready mode.

Although this seems relatively easy it does take practice and coordination to bring your gun up, acquire your target, drop the safety, and hammer two rounds off.  After several rotations and magazines we moved onto movement and concealment.  Although our concealment consisted of some barrels and the movement was basically up/down and left/right it provided everyone the understanding of using cover and concealment and the element of surprise for a would be terrorist, mugger, gang banger, or other types of human feces.

We then moved into a few rounds of introducing a jam by loading spent casings into our magazines intermittently.  One issue here is, during practice you never want to simulate a failure, use a safe means to truly introduce the failure which will force the shooter to take the required steps to try and clear, go to safe, and draw a secondary weapon.

Overall the practice was very basic, but it did provide everyone the opportunity to work with their firearms and gear.  Our next objective with this style of practice will be to bring in a professional to work with us in developing more techniques.

Two of our shooters have taken the Front Site Class for carry conceal and defensive pistol training.  Although they have stated they are not professionals they have offered to lead our next practice class which will be using a carry conceal pistol.  This should be good.

If you are interested in attending one of our practice sessions or leading a session please contact us. 

Well as always stay tuned to more fun with D9 & Friends.

We are starting our bi-weekly Thursday night range trips up again now that the weather is broke and we have a little more day light to operate with.  We started this last year and it became very popular but between building, work, doing gun shows, transfers, Mrs. D9 & the children we didn’t make it out as much as we liked.  So this year we’ve put gun shows on hold until fall, moved schedules out a little on builds and transfers, provided Mrs. D9 with more Saturday night dates and a new bike for one of the children.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “I contracted you to build my rifle, transfer my firearms, sell me new firearms and you’re telling me I have to wait an extra day or week for it so you can go shooting?”  Yes, that’s what we’re saying and here are the reasons why. 

First, we’ve been building AR-15 & AR-10 rifles solid for about 6 months and have had little opportunity to run these guns through the paces.  Although we feel we’ve chosen premium products if we don’t get out and use them to say, yea that does feel right or it doesn’t work good for this application and so forth are expertise is then nothing more then speculation and opinion. 

You as the client expect us to answer those questions and we expect to not only put forth our opinion but back it up with substance and fact.  (However, if you’re a dunce, idiot, main stream media believer then this mentality is foreign, but then again, you wouldn’t be buying a gun because the government will provide and protect you.  Idiot.)

Secondly, several of our clients that shoot with us have other shooting passions that we have not entertained.  Although we may think AR-10’s are the best, there are several other firearms either historic in nature or that just provide a very enjoyable, reliable, and purposeful shooting platforms and offers us exposure to that.  We’re always proud to display what we brought and so are our clients.  Additionally, it gives other shooters the opportunity to experience other platforms as well.

Another reason is, we need the practice.  It can be embarrassing when you show up at the range and you can’t hit the paper.  Additionally the practice allows us and our clients to provide knowledge and offer techniques or make adjustments.

This year though we are going to take the Thursday night shoots to a different level.  We are actively seeking out subject matter experts (SMEs) in various areas.  Last week, we had the opportunity to shoot with Eben from Tactical SolutionsKC.com.  Eben is a local SWAT member and accomplished sniper and sniper instructor. 

This range trip was an excellent night out from our perspective because everyone that came out owned at least one custom D9 rifle and secondly everyone there was already acclimated to their rifle which allowed them to focus on shooting.  Additionally, this allowed us to focus on our techniques and shooting as well.  So it worked out well.

Our next shoot will involve tactical shooting with the AR-15 and a backup handgun.  Again we have invited a SME to shoot with us and we should know in the next week if he is available.  Regardless we will be working in the 0 – 50 yd range open sights, double tap, standing, kneeling, up & down double tap, primary failure with double tap back up.

If you’re interested in a Thursday night shoot out sign up for our newsletter where we notify our friends on when we’re going out.

Thanks and look forward to seeing you all out there.

March was another busy month building, selling, and working.  We were able to get out for a few range trips but more just to do a little testing.  However, it never seemed like we had enough time just to sit down and focus on one rifle and run it through some paces.

We built up a few piston guns using the Adams Arms piston kits.  Although there are a couple of other manufacturers making these, we will probably standardize on the Adams Arms.  The AA kit has 3 gas positions (full, 50%, closed) which makes it very nice if you are shooting with a suppressor, it disassembles for quick cleaning, and very clean installation. 

We tested one of these at the range and pushed 30 rounds through it.  There is a difference when shooting with a piston gun and it seems to have less recoil and cycles smoother.  However, one issue we did have with the AA is on our short barrel AR.  The quick detach flash hider prevented disassembly of the position because they were to close together. 

We also received some custom brakes for our 308 rifles.  As most of you know we really like the Miculek but it will shell out anyone sitting next to you and it’s imperative that you use hearing protection.  These brakes are similar to the Levang (5.56) but for the 308 and we had them tapered to flange up to our .75 diameter barrels. 

We spoke about Troy Industries last month and have been using more of their 308 MRF battle rails.  This seems like a very solid product, light weight, and cost conscience.

Staying with our “colored theme” we worked up a Café Negro 308 for a client out in the Peoples Republic of California.  Of course the colors are appropriate for that local as well.

We also were trying to test out some of our NF NXS optics to compare them to the IOR Valdada optics.  Optics are personal, and we like the NF but our personal favorite is still the IOR Valdada.  The glass is perfect in both, but it seems the NF is a little brighter then the IOR.  Knobs are both very easily adjustable and accessible and both are solid robust scopes.  The IOR has a better price point then the NF.

We also received 2 LWRC REPR’s that we had on order for about a year.  These are some totally bad-ass rifles and there is nothing we can do to make this any meaner then it already is.  Unfortunately, we only had these two in our possession for less then 3 days.  However, we are still sitting on a LWRC REPR in an SBR configuration, but we’re waiting for the second upper in an 18” to go with it. (12.7” & 18” combo $5000). We are also expecting one more in the 18” configuration in MRE that is due in next month.  ($3350).

We also received another shipment of Krieger barrels from WOA in 20” & 24” 308Win.  We have stripped lowers available and uppers and can build a complete rifle or provide the barrel only.  (Barrel only $685, with upper $665)

We also have a good supply of 5.56 barrels from WOA and a couple of 6.8SPC.

If you are looking for more of a hunting rifle in the 308Win we also have 18” Wilson barrels.  (Barrel only $400 stainless, with upper $375, add $40 for cerakote finish)

Thanks.