Muramatsu - Gun Digest Book of Automatic pistols assembly/disassembly

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There is no greater company in the firearms verse that deals with accessories than Brownells. There are other great companies in the same vein, and this is not to lessen them, but the Brownells crew has always been easy to work with, with a great selection of parts and tools, and has been generous to writers and the industry alike. The best part is that I can order stuff standard shipping and the doorbell will still ring two days later. The business has survived several generations and Im sure will continue on through several more. Thank you for the support, folks.

In the last few years we have seen an explosion in gun ownership in the USA. Much of it is due to a fear of newly restrictive legislation that appeared on the horizon. Many new gun owners have purchased their first firearm in response to a get in now while its still legal mentality. Others, due to the expansion of concealed carry laws, have decided to purchase a handgun and maybe pursue the option of legal pistol carry. These are only a couple of reasons, the most common examples, but there are surely more.

It is to these newly minted gun owners that this book is directed. Many of them (you) have questions. How do I shoot, whats the best way to hold the gun as I shoot? What gun should I get and what bullet should it shoot? Why do I even want a gun in the first place and what do I want to use it for? These are questions for other books, so go to the Gun Digest web store and buy them. No, this book is about maintaining and improving those stock factory firearms that we purchased and now we absolutely have to do something with them. How much more stuff do I have to buy to maintain, clean, and even to make it more personalized to me, or more effective as a tool? What if something breaks? Well, in this book we will attempt to answer as many of those questions as possible.

There is a funny scene from the movie Remember the Titans. It takes place in the home of one of the two coaches and involves the two adolescent daughters of the respective coaches. One of the girls, the sportier one, played by a very young Hayden Panetierre, expresses some veiled disdain at the other girls playing with Barbie dolls. The latter girl responds with a statement that is on the order of, Im not playing. Im accessorizing.

This is what we do with our guns. Since the phrase playing with guns has a rather negative connotation, and probably for the better, we should use a different phrase that describes our activities when we change how our gun shoots, feels, looks, or whatever. We accessorize our guns. We upgrade them with new accessories, like Tritium powered night sights, lasers, more magazines or other loading devices, prettier stocks, pink grips, a fun DuraCoat paint job, better performing aftermarket trigger upgrade, slings, bipods, flash hiders, recoil compensators, free floating handguard tubes, and the list is just beginning.

The point is to personalize our firearms. I might drive off the car lot with an identical minivan as the guy behind me, but it will take less than five minutes before my minivan is different from that other guys minivan. It starts with crumbs, French fries, or ATM receipts, but might end with steering wheel covers, fuzzy dice, spinners, and maybe a fuzzbuster. We want our mass produced machine to either look or feel different from the identical mass produced machine that our buddy has. The beauty of the free market is that it tends to address this kind of desire in an energetic manner. If someone wants something, somebody else will make it. Then about fifty other somebody elses will also make it oh so slightly differently, so that the first guy that wanted it has his choice of the different styles or colors of the widget to buy. For example: AR-15 pistol grip.

When one purchases a firearm, he or she is best served by also purchasing a few things along with it. We will address in some detail the items that are most useful and most necessary for maintenance and general care of a number of different firearms. You see, most gun owners, even the least involved, will often not be able to resist the lure of aftermarket accessories and upgrades designed to make the firearm more useful, more ergonomic, and yes, even more cosmetically attractive, but they will often neglect the materials to keep the firearm in good working condition. While this area of gun ownership will quickly take you down a bottomless rabbit hole of goodies (particularly with certain guns), in the pages to come, you can hopefully find the keys to segregate the truly useful and vital from those that are simply nice to have money-makers for the various companies in the firearms industry.

Finally, the attempt will be made to make this tome of knowledge an enjoyable volume to read. This author gets ever so weary of the same old boring this is the newest, coolest gun and this is why you should buy it shtick. In the following pages you will find tips from other new gun owners, tips from veteran gun owners (that are actually useful), and therefore maybe even find some of your questions answered and your needs met to your satisfaction.

Kevin Muramatsu

Im going to present a few hypothetical stories here. Each situation finds the gun owners, mostly new gun owners, in a different situation, with different circumstances of life. Each gets a firearm to accomplish some task self-defense, hunting, recreation, or combination thereof. None settles with just the basic gun from the sporting goods store. In fact, that is where they start and then move on from that beginning. They buy more stuff to make the gun easier to use, more effective for the task at hand, for bragging rights and to show off their wealth or their sport. All of these reasons and more are used to spend more money on more stuff, to accessorize.

This was Jesuss starting point. A Glock 22 and one mag. He expanded of course, but still kept the price down by buying used and buying smart.

We will explore along in a slightly different format here. Many published works tend to talk about this stuff by purpose, or by kind of gun only, but were going to look at it in a sort of hybrid way. The reason for this is that most new gun owners or wannabe gun owners tend to look at the issue not from one of those perspectives, but from both at the same time. So the guns they choose and the stuff they buy for them are getting, at least for now, mashed into the same breath for the sake of storytelling. Im doing this because stories relay information better than just yapping out the text. Stories offer a situational awareness that makes the whole thing fit together better.