I’ll cover a few odds and ends here. Let’s start with a major media outlet discovering the magazine disconnector.

With a hat tip to Stephen Wenger’s Defensive Use of Firearms Digest (subscriptions at no charge), NBC News reported that “at least 277” people have died as a result of the Rule 1 failure (All guns are always loaded) by removing a magazine from a semiauto pistol and assuming it’s unloaded.

This had to be followed by a failure to follow Rule 2 (muzzle discipline) and adding a press to the trigger.

The theme is that “we need more gadgets because a few people are stupid.” They also refer to the magazine disconnect as a “magazine safety.”

It’s not a safety. You’re still bound by Rule 1 and Rule 2. It’s behavior that creates unneeded casualties.

Magazine disconnector gadgets aren’t safeties. Check the chamber. First look, then touch. Then mind the muzzle and keep your finger clear of the trigger.

Also, they only refer to handguns. Which magazine fed rifles have a magazine disconnector?

Apparently, their safety “experts” told them that the accidents involve people with varying levels of experience. They fail to note that a good many personal injuries – and likely more fatalities – involved intoxicants and/or prohibited possessors. Some involve “show-offs” – during an argument, perhaps a domestic, with a magazine-ejecting flourish, then pointing the muzzle at oneself and pulling the trigger.

Congratulations. Gadgets like this can put off the eventual demise of such an individual, but it can’t prevent “self-selection” by other means eventually.

Don’t rely on gadgets. Rely on strict attention to the rules.

Let’s jump to online firearms resources; there have been some recent additions of note. Aside from Wenger’s website (frequently updated), there are others worthy of your attention. Some are pay services, requiring a subscription. These include American Fighting Revolver and the newly announced Gun Tales. As more firearms-related information is pushed out on the internet, there are major “social media” sites that restrict access. In an “alternative economy” model, some move to subscription services.

Sheriff Jim Wilson of Gun Tales. Along with Shane Jahn, he provides features of interest to those in the fraternity; more than gear and specifications – they have stories. Image captured from guntales.net.

AFR is the home of Darryl Bolke and Bryan Eastridge. Retired cops, they post images of classy older firearms along with some serious maintenance videos you won’t get to see elsewhere. It’s well done and well worth the current tariff of $5 per month. With the “no contracts, no long-term commitment” approach, it’s like purchasing your favorite gun magazine – at a lower cost. They regularly move more content onto the site.

Gun Tales is the newly opened subscription home occupied by Sheriff Jim Wilson (Ret.), a popular gun writer and good friend, and Shane Jahn, a recently retired federal peace officer, a participant in the firearms and hunting media game.

This new service is offered for $10 per month or $90 per year and you can cancel at any time. For this you get eight new features per month, and they go beyond specifications to personal stories.

Finally, last week two states – Minnesota and New Jersey – have, according to “the news,” filed a lawsuit against GLOCK. “Lawfare” has become a commonly used term to denote those actions the writer considers frivolous lawsuits, malicious (and political) prosecutions; I’m not sure where this nonsense fits in.

According to one source (New York Post), the company is accused of making “ … handguns that are easily modified to fire as illegal machine guns through a cheap add-on known as a “Glock switch.” The lawsuits said that the $20 switches transform Glock handguns into easily concealable weapons that can fire 1,200 rounds per minute, recklessly endangering the public.”

Above, a real-deal GLOCK 18 at a law enforcement gathering. From the shower of empties, you can see it’s fast. And it works, unlike the junk sold to lightweights on the internet.

I’ve never tested such items, though I fired the GLOCK 18. There was considerable blowback when I concluded that it’d be fine if the fight were within the confines of an elevator. The G18 works; I have information from some that the cheap “make it a machinegun” gizmos make a standard sidearm unreliable, causing stoppages and, in some cases, creating a “firing out of battery” situation.

Understand that the pistol design came into military use in around 1980, that the GLOCK pistol became a staple of law enforcement as soon as DEA could figure out a way to sell it as a “double-action only” design to ATF, and it has been – for most of the past 30-35 years – the most commonly carried police sidearm in America. We’re a little late to the “this could be dangerous” conclusion.

After Dad’s generation came back from WWII, they wanted peace and quiet at home – but evil corporations like Ford, Chrysler and GM sold conveyances with internal combustion engines to which you could affix straight pipes without a muffler, predictably violating the peace of war veterans.

Like that. Or making engines powerful enough that, unmodified, it would predictably – and recklessly – endanger the public. Looking at the data of the last hundred years or so, I’d say motorized conveyances – vehicles – have more bodies stacked than GLOCK pistols – or any other.

Perhaps if GLOCK – and other manufacturers – simply prohibited sales of their products to any law enforcement agencies in those states … ? Just a thought.

-- Rich Grassi