So Tactical, So Queer.

My shooting friends know that I’m a total gear queer. If it’s made of nylon and has MOLLE/PALS straps on it, I gots tas haves its.

Some time back, my buddy Mike and I were brainstorming tactical gear. He’s got an SKS as his primary shoulder arm and was lamenting the fact that the tactical gear out there is pretty much only for the AR/AK/M1A*, nobody makes MOLLE web gear for dudes with irregular arms, that he would totally buy it if it existed.

That Damned Firing Pin

Owners of the Star Modelo B Pistola 9mm will all nod their heads solemnly knowing the travails I went through.

See, The Star is otherwise a darned fine little auto, a scaled-down “clone” of the Colt 1911. I put “clone” in quotation marks as it’s not a direct copy of J.M. Browning’s venerable Philipino-killing workhorse, but a reasonable facsimile. The Trigger pivots on a pin rather than being of the transfer bar type that wraps around the magazine well, the extractor is external rather than internal and there’s no goddamned grip safety. Thank God for small miracles, I guess.

The Star Modelo B is the first pistol I ever purchased upon being old enough to legally do so. I did so in January 2002, five months into being 21. I ain’t one to attach sentimental values to inanimate ojbects, but I do think it’s interesting that of all the firearms I’ve owned and parted ways with, I still have this one.

Anyhow, if you’re a Star pistol owner, you know not to dryfire the damned thing as you’ll break the firing pin, as I had done to mine years and years ago and never got around to fixing as the firing pins cost about half what I paid for the gun ($50 shipped versus $100 for the gun back in 2002). So, I let it sit.

Recent events coupled with unemployment have gotten me reinterested in the little piece.

So, here we go: