Cheaper Than Dirt! Opens New Location in McKinney, Texas

Fort Worth based internet retailer Cheaper Than Dirt! has just announced the grand opening of a brand new retail store in the North Texas suburb of McKinney, located at 2058 West University Drive, just off of Highway 380 and US-75. The new store will offer a selection of firearms, ammunition, and hunting and shooting accessories.

Centrally located in the Towne Crossing shopping center, the new store “Cheaper Than Dirt Guns! shares space with various other establishments including a Super Target, Lowes Home Improvement Center, and a Buffalo Wild Wings. Dominating the view upon entering the store are two long walls with literally hundreds of shotguns and rifles which hang on display, awaiting eager buyers. From Colt AR-15 rifles to Mossberg 500 and M590A1 shotguns, to semiautomatic AK-47 variants, the selection is truly massive. A cornerstone of the store is, of course, “Ammo Alley.” Here customers can browse nearly 50 different brands of shotgun, rifle, and pistol ammunition.

The grand opening will run August 12th through the 15th with many items marked as low as possible. Smith & Wesson M&P 15 rifles start at just $799.95, Ruger LCP .380 pistols can be found for just $299.95, and Maverick 88 pump action shotguns are priced at a very affordable $189.95. In addition to these great deals, the first 3,000 customers to be rung up at a register will receive a free TexSport water bottle and drawings for free merchandise will be held throughout the grand opening.

Customers who wish to trade in older firearms will be able to sell their gently used pistol, rifle, or shotgun at the McKinney store location.

According to local residents, the store is a welcome addition to the area which, despite the failing economy nationwide, has seen robust growth. The North Texas area, McKinney in particular, as been largely unaffected by the nationwide recession. Area home prices have remained steady, and the entire four county area has seen continued strong population growth.

Since the presidential elections of 2008, gun and ammunition sales have skyrocketed nationwide. For a short time, AR-15 and semiautomatic AK-47 rifles, along with many other variants and nearly all calibers of ammunition, were nearly impossible to find as thousands scrambled to purchase what they could in anticipation of the election results. Since then, consumer demand has returned to normal, allowing manufacturers and retailers time to restock shelves. No where is this more evident than at Cheaper Than Dirt GUNS! in McKinney where they literally thousands of firearms available for immediate purchase by qualified buyers.

When pressed for more information about the new location, Cheaper Than Dirt CEO Michael Tenny said only “We’re very excited to see the new store opening, and hope to have more locations open in the future.”

Store hours are Monday-Saturday 10am-8pm and Sunday from 12 Noon until 6pm.

Cheaper Than Dirt! Begins Selling Firearms Online

Cheaper Than Dirt! announced Wednesday that they have begun selling firearms online in addition to their broad selection of ammunition and firearms accessories. The move follows two years of rapid growth for the Fort Worth based company. Robust sales of ammunition and firearms accessories in 2008, 2009, and the first part of 2010 have prompted the company to expand into pistol, rifle, and shotgun sales.

CEO Michael Tenny was very happy to announce the new online offerings, saying “This is something we’ve worked towards for some time. We’ve now implemented a system that allows customers to browse, select and purchase a firearm online. With more than 3,500 firearms available online, we have one of the biggest selections on the internet. Firearms are shipped via 2nd Day Air at a very low $7.99, so it arrives extremely quickly after we confirm a valid FFL to transfer the firearm to.”

Federal law requires firearms to be shipped to FFL Dealers. Purchasers can browse, select, and purchase a gun online and, after submitting FFL information, the firearm will be sent to a local dealer who will complete the federally mandated background check and transfer the firearm to the customer for a small fee.

An enormous variety of firearms are available at “Cheaper Than Dirt” prices. The broad selection of guns includes more than 70 manufacturers and millions of dollars worth of inventory in stock and ready to ship directly to your local dealer. Users can easily browse by manufacturer or by firearm type and caliber to locate their desired purchase and checkout online.

The process for ordering a firearm is very straightforward. After finding the shotgun, rifle, or pistol they wish to purchase, customers simply add it to the online cart, and checkout online as they would normally. They will receive an email confirming the order and providing further instructions. At that point, purchasers will need to contact their local gun dealer to arrange for transfer of the firearm. It’s easy to locate a dealer near you usingCheaper Than Dirt’s online dealer locater.

Transfer fees can vary so it is a good idea to check with the FFL Dealer ahead of time to request a quote on the fees associated with your firearm transfer. If the customer feels that the fees are too high, it’s a simple process to search for another FFL Dealer. The FFL dealer or the customer will then fax or email a copy of their ATF issued license to Cheaper Than Dirt, and upon receipt the firearm will be shipped to the dealer who should contact the customer to let them know that their new purchase has arrived.

You can see the full selection of firearms available for purchase by going to the Cheaper Than Dirt website at http://www.CheaperThanDirt.com

The Perfect Three Gun Combination

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Via Says Uncle and the Firing Pin Journal we find that there's a popular debate that's been circulating throughout the gun-blogger community concerning the perfect three gun combination. Discussions such as these have been around as long as there have been choices in personal defensive weapons. Much like the 1911/Glock or AK/AR debates, there is never a clearly decisive winner. I'm sure as far back as the stone age cavemen were arguing whether flint or obsidian made better arrowheads. Of course, I'm still going to join in the fray and voice this writer's opinion.

Given that you could have only one of each, what one pistol, shotgun, and rifle would you choose? For the purposes of this exercise, we're choosing them for self defense. Naturally then, I'm inclined to choose firearms that are versatile and for which ammunition is inexpensive and widely available, and which function more or less in nearly any condition.

Glock 19 Some people maintain that the Glock 19 is too big to be a defensive handgun, but for the purposes of this exercise we're not limited to concealed carry. The Glock 19 is favored by law enforcement agencies throughout the world as a defensive weapon. Despite the fact that it is usually best worn as an open carry weapon, I feel it fits the bill nicely.

Remington 870 Express Synthetic When it comes to shotguns, the Remington 870 line is pretty much the standard by which all other pump-action shotguns are judged. Being a pump action, it will digest nearly any 12 gauge round with zero complaints. While not as fast as a semiautomatic shotgun, the increased reliability of the 870 makes it a good selection.

PTR 91 Many people would choose an AR or AK platform rifle as a primary defensive carbine. While 7.62x51 (.308 Winchester) ammunition is more expensive than either 5.56 or 7.62x39, I prefer something a bit larger and chose the PTR 91. The lack of a gas system means that it will operate in nearly any conditions and digest almost any 7.62 NATO or .308 Winchester load.

Is this the perfect combination? Honestly, I'm not convinced such a thing exists. Weapons for personal defense are, by their very nature, a personal choice. Individual ergonomics, budget, preferences and training play heavily into such choices.

How Rifle Twist Works

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Just reading the title, you might think this would be a very short post. Everybody knows that rifle twist works by spinning the bullet so that it is stable as it flies through the air. Naturally, there's a bit more to it than that.

Anyone that spends any amount of time at the rifle range or hunting lease will inevitably find himself within earshot of two people discussing barrel twist. Twist as discussed here, refers to the rifling in the barrel of modern rifles making a full 360 degree turn in a given length of inches. As an example, a 1 in 7 Twist means the rifling makes one 360 degree turn for every seven inches of barrel. By the same token, 1 in 9 twist means the rifling comes a full 360 degrees in 9 inches. So, the lower the number of inches, the tighter the twist of the rifling.

The amount of twist you need in a given rifle depends a lot on the weight and length of the bullet. As you might imagine, heavier bullets require a tighter twist in order to spin them up enough to stabilize them. The length of the bullet is important, because a longer bullet has more surface area for the rifling to engage. That additional surface area gives the rifling more grip on the bullet and consequently enables it to spin it up more easily.

Many firearms are manufactured with a variety of rifling twists available. For the popular AR-15 platform, several different twists are currently produced. Not all ammo shoots well in all twist ratios. A barrel with a 1x7 Twist tends to be too tight for most lighter, more commonly fired ammunition, but is perfect for heavier bullets in the 69-80 grain range. Firing a light weight 55 grain bullet through a tight twist barrel can "overspin" the bullet and result in a loss of accuracy as the rapidly spinning bullet curves through the air, not unlike a curve ball. Overspinning the bullet can also cause some thin jacketed hollow point projectiles to fly apart from the centrifugal forces of the spin.

Standard military issue M16 and M4 rifles, and their AR counterparts, are commonly found with 1 in 9 twist barrels. Originally designed for the military's use of SS109 (the official NATO name of 5.56mm, or .223), military testing concluded this twist ratio is actually superior for this steel core bullet. 1x9 and 1x10 twist ratios are sort of the "middle of the road" for .223 projectiles, and these are the most common. We suggest our Lake City military XM193 ammunition for this barrel.

On the lighter side of things, a 1x12 boasts excellent accuracy on standard and lighter projectiles in the 40-52 grain range. Older M16 rifles were manufactured with the 1x12 Twist ratio. Our item number ARR-115 offers a conversion upper for your AR that takes less than a minute to install, and the barrel has a desirable 1x12 twist ratio. If you are buying a varmint rifle chambered in .223, chances are it will sport a 1x12 Twist Ratio.

Budget Pistols: Buying Used

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In our last post, we discussed choosing concealed carry handguns for a new shooter. One subject we touched on was budgeting for a pistol. Firearms, as a general rule, are not inexpensive. High quality firearms can command prices that exceed $1,000. This places many firearms outside of the average person's budget. What do you do when the pistol that "works" for you is one that is too expensive? One solution we mentioned was buying used. The problem is, not all used firearms are the bargains that they seem.

When buying a used firearm, you don't ever truly know how well that handgun was cared for by its previous owner. As such, without having a used firearm inspected by a gunsmith (which I highly encourage anyone buying a used firearm to do), you never know whether you're picking up a bargain, or buying someone else's "problem". One exception to this however is factory refurbished or certified pre-owned firearms.

A number of manufacturers have "certified" used pistol programs. These pistols are thoroughly inspected, tested, and then certified by factory armorers before being offered for sale. One of the best programs like this that I know of is Sig Sauer's Certified Pre-Owned program. Sig Sauer regularly buys back used law enforcement firearms when departments are upgrading.

Glock also offers factory refurbished handguns from time to time. As with Sig Sauer, Glock has their pistols inspected by factory armorers and replaces any worn parts before certifying the firearms for resale. Both manufacturers offer 1 year warranties on their refurbished and Certified Pre-Owned handguns.

Law enforcement trade-ins are the most common firearms that make their way through factory refurbishing. Many of these firearms are barely used at all, only fired a few times a year for practice and qualification. Currently, many departments are moving towards replacing their standard issue firearms with new Smith and Wesson M&P pistols. These new pistols are inexpensive already, and can be picked up brand new for less than $400 in many cases. But the real bargains are the pistols being traded in by these departments. Many are trading Sig Sauer 229 and 226 pistols, along with many Beretta 92 and Glock handguns. These factory refurbished Glocks can be had for $400 to $459, nearly $100 off the price of a brand new model. Beretta 92 models have been seen selling for less than $350. The used Sig Sauer handguns are sometimes priced even better, often retailing for as much as 50% less than a new model.

When purchasing a handgun, the price tag can present a serious hurdle. Many people simply don't care for the low budget pistols available on the market, and yet cannot afford a higher quality pistol. Buying a used handgun allows a lower entry level price point for those who desire a high-end model. Just remember - go for factory refurbished or Certified Pre-Owned models, or insist on having a gunsmith inspect any potential purchase.

Guest Post: Commander Zero on Simplicity and Preparedness

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We humans tend to have an affinity for elegant, complex devices. While having the latest whiz-bang device that not only solves your firearm cleaning problem, but also folds your laundry and walks the dog is great, when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, do you really want to rely on a complex device with hundreds of moving parts? Sometimes a simple solution is indeed the best.

Commander Zero of the Notes From The Bunker blog wrote recently about this and more, and is our guest blogger this week. Here’s his take in his post "Overthinking & Occam’s Razor"

There is a such thing as overthinking things. When I taught hunter safety to kids one of the topics we had to address was how to take care of yourself when (not ‘if’, guys..when) you got lost out in boonies. We would tell the kids that you have to have a survival kit and here's what you had to have in it..and we’d give them a list. More often, the kids already had their own ideas. During class we’d have a couple kids pull out their kits and we’d go over the contents. What was interesting was how many kids brought in a flint and steel. We’d go through their kit looking for any other means of firestarting and all the kid would have is the flint and steel. We’d gently suggest that while being able to start a fire with flint and steel was certainly a handy talent, and quite useful under the right conditions, it might be a bit more efficient and simple to have a couple match safes in their pocket and backpack with strike anywhere matches. Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, let me say that I carry around one of those flint/steel firestarter combos in my bag. But, its in addition to several packages of sealed waterproof matches. (And its always, always, always good policy to carry a small waterproof container of matches in your pack *and* in your pockets. Because you never know when you're going to get separated from your gear and all you’ll have its whats in your pockets.) When its 10 degrees out and my hands are cold I think Im going to be better served with getting a match struck than I am by scraping a piece of metal against a rock.

Similar story with food. Someone told me about their home canning operation where they would go to the farmers market, purchase ears of corn, cook them, cut the kernels off the cob, can the whole bunch and have the glass jars lined up neatly on the shelf for their food storage. That’s great, I can soup and stew every so often. But at the same time it seems to make a bit more sense to just head down to the Albertson’s on Tuesday Canned Good Sale Day and buy as many vacuum sealed cans of Green Giant corn as I want at fifty cents a can. Why reinvent the wheel if I don’t have to? Certainly, I want to know how to can items for the day I can’t head down to the supermarket and get them, but while I can get them at the supermarket cheaper, easier, and better packaged why wouldn’t I?

You might recall a post a while back about a buddy of mine who wanted a .30 caliber, semi-automatic rifle and wound up spending a chunk of money on a 1941 Johnson. (Disregarding the gun itself, there was still the issue of spare parts and accessories which only made a weird choice into a foolish one.) The Johnson was not his first foray in the .30 cal. Semiauto search. He previously had a Remington 7400 in .308 with a bunch of ten-round magazines. Again, re-inventing the wheel. He could have just bought an M1A or a PTR-91 or even a Garand for the money he spent and pretty much have been done with the whole thing cheaper and faster than the roundabout way he did things.

There's a joke that goes something like this: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are out on a camping trip. It’s the middle of the night and Holmes wakes up Watson.
“Watson! Wake up, man!”
“Huh? What?”
“I just woke up and noticed the bright starry universe above me and do you know what I’ve deduced?”
”That we are all just minor players in a larger drama that we’ll never know the outcome of?”
“No.”
“That the universe is too big and too grand for the human mind to ever fully comprehend?”
“No, no.”
“Well then…what have you deduced from looking at the starry sky above us, Holmes?”
“Its rather obvious, Watson – someone has stolen our tent.”

The point is that we sometimes see a problem and manufacture all sorts of complex and intricate answers when theres a simpler, and probably just as good, answer. And sometimes we engineer the problem to fit into our pre-conceived desire of what we want the answer to be…a far worse sin.

Occam’s Razor is the term for finding a solution that gives the same result as a more complex one. If you look it up, Occam’s razor has several meanings but they essentially come down to ‘a simple solution is better than a complex one’.

I mention all of this because often in the forums I read posts that ask questions and people come up with most complex and convoluted answers. More often than not there are simpler answers but sometimes we get so wrapped up in overthinking things that we disregard or dismiss the answer that isn’t ‘tacticool’ enough. There’s a story, untrue as it turns out but still instructive, that when the space program started there was a need to find a way to make pens work in zero gravity. Much money and time was spent developing a pen that would write upside-down and in freezing temperatures. This technological marvel cost thousands and thousands to develop. The Russians simply used pencils.

When stocking up and gearing up it’s always a good idea to try and keep it as simple as possible. There is no shortage of really cool (and spendy) solutions to the issues we want to address, but there's probably many simpler alternatives as well. The final arbiter, in my opinion, is whether the solution proposed meets your pre-established criteria. (This, naturally, means you actually have to come up with some criteria for what you’re looking for…otherwise you’ll just snag the first shiny thing with cool packaging that gets in your way.)

The juggling act here is that balance of ‘simpler/cheaper’ versus ‘meets criteria’. For example…the never ending $95 Mosin Nagant vs. $1000 AR-15 flame-wars. If your criteria is ‘send bullet downrange’ then your choice is probably going to be different than ‘engage multiple targets as rapidly as possible’. If your criteria is ‘not starve’ versus ‘continue existing dietary habits’ then your decision between a $20 50# bag of rice and a $300 case of freeze drieds may be simple to make.

I try to remain objective in these sorts of things and let the facts drive the answers, but sometimes it’s difficult. Most of the time, the simpler solutions seem to be the most appropriate (if not ‘best’) solutions. I suppose the trick is recognizing which solutions are because they are what we wanted to begin with versus solutions which were arrived at on their own.

Commander Zero makes his home in Montana with his wife where he is an active member in the preparedness community. You can visit his blog at CommanderZero.com

Guest Post: Aiming or Point Shooting?

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Today our featured guest Blogger is Mr. Completely. He is an accomplished Steel Challenge competitor, and he recently wrote a very good piece discussing Aiming vs. Point shooting.

There has been some discussion over the last month about point shooting or using the sights when shooting a handgun. The discussion has been mostly along the lines of should you use one, or the other, or one method sometimes, and something different at other times. I should mention up front that I am not a highly trained and paid firearms instructor, and I have never been mistaken for Todd Jarrett, Max Michel, or Dave Sevigny at a match, nor is that likely ever to happen. I do shoot a lot though, and I've spent a lot of time over the last few years watching the pros shoot, trying to figure out what they do and how they manage to do it so quickly.

One of the first things I noticed is that most of the top shooters have excellent eye sight. There's not too much you can do about that if your eye sight sucks though, except correct things as best you can.

Another thing I've noticed is that the pros don't miss very often in matches, and when they do, their pickup shot is almost instantaneous. That tells me they are using their sights, since they can tell their misses, "Call their shots", at the time they pull the trigger, rather than waiting to hear or see the result of their shot. It's just about impossible to do that without some sort of a sight picture to go by.

But if they are using their sights, how do they manage to shoot so quickly? I don't know for sure, and I suspect some of them may not know for sure either, but here's what I think they are doing. It's actually fairly simple to describe, but actually doing it is another story entirely. To make it work, it takes tens of thousands of rounds of practice every season. First, they are ignoring the sights completely leading up to the shot, as they can get on, or very close to on target by point shooting, or more accurately, "Point Aiming".

Here's the part that separates the pros from the rest of us. Just before taking the shot, they verify their aim with an instantaneous sight picture to ascertain that they are where they think they are, and if they are not, adjust until the sight picture is proper, then fire the shot. Since tempo is a significant part of speed shooting, holding the shot for that fraction of a second is really hard. Your body says "Shoot Now!" and your instantaneous sight picture says "Don't Shoot Yet!". For most of us the "Shoot Now" usually wins, and we miss the shot! That's where practice comes in, and learning to look for that instantaneous "Sight Picture Verification", and more importantly, learning not to ignore it and shoot anyway.

One of the things I like about true Steel Challenge competition is that each stage, or target layout, has something in it that challenges one specific aspect of fast and accurate shooting. Smoke & Hope, specifically challenges you to not forget to use your sights for that sight picture verification. There are four large plates close in, two on the left and two on the right. The stop plate is much smaller, and much farther away. A good point shooter can hit the first four quickly, but will often miss the stop plate since he will fail to switch back to using the sights for the last shot. Shooting that way also requires two sighting techniques, and changing from one to the other after the fourth plate.

On the other hand, using the point aim/quick verify/shoot method allows you to use the same technique for all five shots. With practice, LOTS of practice, the instantaneous verification can be as fast as straight point shooting on a stage like Smoke & Hope, as all you are looking for is to see that there's some "White" on the other side of your sights!

As I've said in previous posts, though, 95% or more of successful handgun shooting boils down to trigger control. A While back I was watching a shooter shooting with a Crimson Trace laser sight. I could see the laser dot on the plate just before the shot was fired, but his shots would often miss the plate. In pulling the trigger he was pulling the gun off the target. Without good trigger control it doesn't matter what other techniques you use. The top shooters all have incredible trigger control, and winning or losing boils down to the remaining elements.

The next time you see one of the pros running Smoke & Hope in sub two seconds and making it look easy, remember you are watching someone who has practiced that specific stage thousands and thousands of times. Not just shot it thousands of times, but "Practiced" it thousands of times. There IS a difference between just shooting and practicing, and that's a good topic for some other time!

Mr. Completely makes his home on Whidbey Island in Northwest Washington with his wife and fellow blogger, KeeWee. He organizes the annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno, Nevada, and also runs regular e-postal matches coordinated with other bloggers.

John M. Marlin and Marlin Firearms Corporation

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John M. Marlin was born in Connecticut in 1836. He apprenticed as a tool and die maker and worked at the Colt Manufacturing plant during the Civil War. In 1870, at age 21, Marlin started his own gun manufacturing shop in New Haven, Connecticut. His first firearms were single-shot derringers in .22, .30, .32 and .41 calibers. He called them “Ok”, the “Never Miss” and the “Victor”. About 16,000 of these single-shot derringers were made. In the book, Marlin Firearms: A History of the Guns and The Company That Made Them written by William S. Brophy, Frank Kenna, the president of Marlin Firearms at the time wrote, “His products were tiny single-shot pistols for ladies to carry in their purses during the unsettled post-Civil War years.” Between 1870 and 1887, Marlin expanded his line of firearms to include single-action revolvers. There were six models developed.

The first Marlin lever-action rifle was made in 1881, it was called the Model 1881. According to the 2008 Standard Catalog of Firearms, 18th edition, the Model 1881 “has always been regarded as a high quality rifle.” The Model 1881 could handle large calibers such as the .32-40, .38-55, .40-60, .45-70 and the .45-85.

In 1889, Marlin developed the first side-ejection, solid-top receiver lever-action rifle. Annie Oakley was such a fan of the Marlin Model 1889 that Marlin custom made one of the lever-action repeaters just for her.

Marlin’s other great achievements were the development of the Model 1891 and the Model 1893. The Marlin Model 1891 was the first repeating rifle able to fire the .22 Short, .22 Long and the .22 Long Rifle. The Model 1892 was Marlin’s first rifle designed to accept smokeless powder cartridges. Marlin still sells these models today.

The Model 1891 is now called the Model 39 and the Model 1893 is now the Model 336. Marlin’s website states, “they are the oldest shoulder arm designs in the world still being produced.”

John M. Marlin passed away in 1901 and his sons took over the business. In 1915 a New York-based company purchased Marlin and renamed it the Marlin Rockwell Corporation. During WWI, the company made the Marlin machine gun, a modification of the Browning machine gun. Marlin’s website says, “a tank model was produced for some of the first tanks ever used in warfare.” The newly named Marlin Rockwell Corporation became of the of the biggest machine gun makers in the world for the United States and its allies during the war.

In 1922, the company filed for bankruptcy and went into foreclosure. Two years later, the Marlin Rockwell Corporation went up for auction. Frank Kenna, a lawyer, bought the company for $100. Kenna also acquired the debt and mortgage of the company. Kenna renamed the company Marlin Firearms Corporation. The Marlin Firearms Corporation stayed in the Kenna family for 84 years until Remington purchased Marlin in 2008. Remington’s website comments on the acquirement of the Marlin Firearms Corporation:

“For well over a century, these classics have been synonymous with dependability, flawless performance and accuracy, at a reasonable price. The simple, fast actions are known far and wide for uncompromising reliability, and their ability to stand up under the wide range of conditions.”

In 2008 Marlin produced its 30,000,000th lever-action rifle. The commemorative Model 1895CB was donated to the NRA at the 2008 SHOT show.

The Kenna family continued John M. Marlin’s success with developments of the Micro-Groove Rifling System in 1953 and in 2004 the T-900 Fire Control System. They continue to develop high quality firearms.