Divemedic

Skirmish Rifle Project

 During the Florida Blogshoot, I had the opportunity to shoot Dave of Ammoman‘s Scout Rifle. I was amazed at how much lighter his rifle was, and how little felt recoil there was. I knew right then and there that I would have to build one of my own. In keeping with his ScoutRifle 2.0 theory, I began thinking about what I wanted to do with a new rifle. 

I want something that is going to be more suited to a militia kind of battlespace: 

I need my rifle to be relatively lightweight, right around 8 pounds carried weight. My Oracle is too heavy at 9.3 pounds unloaded with an ACOG on top. 

I want a rifle that had more power, more range, and fires a larger bullet than the 62 grain 5.56mm that my AR15 uses. 

I also want to stay with the AR platform.  

I thought that .308 would be a great caliber. Now since parts are kind of hard to come by these days and it would be difficult to get a lower right now, I decided that instead of building a new rifle from the ground up, I would simply rework my DPMS Oracle:

I reworked it by replacing the 16 inch heavy barrel that came with the rifle with an 18 inch Faxon pencil barrel. Then I added an EDGE 15 inch Carbon Fiber handguard from Brigand Arms, an adjustable gas block, a Nitromet gas tube, and a Gemtech compensator. I also replaced the bolt carrier with a low mass bolt carrier  from JP rifles. 


I used the bolt that originally came with the Oracle, because JP rifles didn’t have any bolts in stock. I checked the headspace on the bolt, and it locks up fine with the go/no go checker.

I just finished assembling the rifle. The rifle weighs 7 pounds without the ACOG and 8.1 pounds with it. The balance is right in the center of the mag well. It is 36 inches long and looks great:

Here it is, pictured above my AR15 for comparison. The AR-10 only weighs 3/4 of a pound more than its 5.56mm cousin. I am now (no so) patiently waiting to take it out to the range on Saturday. I need to tune the gas block and get the scope dialed in. 


I know that the pencil barrel won’t do as well with a large amount of fire as the heavy barrel, but this is not a battle rifle. It’s also too heavy to call a scout rifle. I am going to call this a skirmish rifle. 

In all, the modifications cost me right at $1,150. Counting the cost of the original rifle and the ACOG, the total cost for this rifle is right around $3,200. I already know that the rifle is just as easy to carry as my AR-15, and packs a bigger punch. I am hoping it is a tack driver.





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By Divemedic, ago

Vaccine mandatory

Miguel at gunfreezone says that we should not worry about vaccination cards. This is where Miguel and I differ in our opinion. I have a lot of respect for him, but I am reading what the powers that be are saying, and I don’t trust them a bit. 

The New York state bar wants the vaccine to be mandatory. 
NBC news says that the government can’t make it mandatory. 

“Nobody’s talking about coming to your house, holding you down and vaccinating you,” Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, told TODAY.

Of course, they also go on to point out that they can make your life miserable if you refuse. 
But the federal government has some ways to get people to vaccinate, imposing it as a condition of getting a passport, for example.
So they won’t hold you down, but they can force your compliance by denying you the ability to travel, enter a courthouse, and any number of things. That makes it an offer you can’t refuse. 
Now add to that, the attitude that the left has about “punishing” Trump supporters, and the fact that most people who would refuse the vaccine are Trump supporters, and you see why I have so much distrust. 
By Divemedic, ago

Useful idiot no longer useful

If you all remember, I wrote about Grandmaster J and his band of insurgents, the “Not F*cking Around Coalition” (NFAC) over the summer. They were showing up in cities around the southeast and intimidating people by brandishing firearms.  

It seems that, now that the election is over, he and his band of useful idiots have reached the limit of their usefulness. He has been arrested and charged for interfering and threatening Federal law enforcement when he pointed a weapon mounted light at them in September. So it took them three months to figure this out? Of course it didn’t. They needed him around to make headlines and stoke fear, and now they don’t. 

You will note that BLM is quiet. The street violence is over. One phase ends, the next begins. 

By Divemedic, ago

Ignoring authority

Last night, my wife and I went out with her parents and brother. We went to the town square in Ocala. We dined in a Cajun restaurant and then watched the Christmas tree lightning. After her parents left to go home, we stopped to have a couple of drinks with her brother at a patio bar called “Bank Street.” 

We were there for an hour or so, and I used the opportunity to do some people watching. There were well over 150 people in this bar, and while we were there, I saw three (yes, three) of them with masks on. One of those three only had the mask dangling from one ear. Otherwise, it was a normal Friday night meeting place: people were dancing, mingling, and generally enjoying the evening. 
A nearby park had a large screen set up, and there were perhaps a dozen or so families watching “A Muppet Christmas Carol,” as a Harley riding Santa Claus posed for pictures with women in their 40s and 50s, without a mask in sight. As we walked through the square to return to our car, I noticed a large gathering of people on a second floor terrace bar. There were perhaps 100 or so people watching a televised football game. There were artists set up in the town square, selling their wares. In all, I saw several hundreds of people, and less than a quarter of them were wearing masks. 
It seems that many people in middle America are doing what Americans do best- ignoring “authority.” Which we should ALL be doing. 
By Divemedic, ago

Stand up deliver

 Ted Cruz is angry at Lin Wood for telling Republican voters to sit out the runoff election unless the Republican party ensures fair and secure elections. He said:

I don’t know who this clown is, but anyone saying America would be better off w/ Chuck Schumer as Majority Leader—producing huge tax increases, the Green New Deal, massive amnesty & a packed Supreme Court destroying the Bill of Rights—is trying to mislead the people of Georgia.

I agree with Lin Wood: I am loyal to my freedom and to the Constitution. That means that I will support any political party or platform that supports those ideals. I am not loyal to the Republican party. My support of the Republican party and its platform only exists as long as they are in agreement with mine. As soon as the Republican party stops fighting to maintain this nation and instead dedicates itself to seeking power for the sake of power, then they stop being my ally of convenience. 

Just because the Democrats are my enemy doesn’t make the Republicans my friend. If the Republicans are simply going to ignore the election shenanigans, then I see no difference between them and the Democrats. Since those are the only two realistic choices we have (Libertarians don’t have a chance- so don’t even go there), this means that it is inevitable that we wind up either with a dictatorship, a civil war, or both. 

Republicans- either do something now, or become completely useless. 

By Divemedic, ago

WTF is up with shipping companies?

 I have had a rash of problems getting products that I have ordered. There is no real pattern to it.

For example, I had an order from Bulletproof Everyone that took forever because they just didn’t ship it.

An order from Brownell’s was lost by Fedex. 

and now, my $400 handguard from Brigand arms is missing. I ordered it on November 19. I got a notice from them that it shipped the next day. The USPS tracking says that they are still awaiting the package. I contacted Brigand Arms, and they swear to me that they shipped it. They have put a trace on the package, but here I sit, still waiting on the last parts I need to complete my rifle build. Either USPS or Brigand Arms has lost my order. 

By Divemedic, ago

But Trump is a dictator!

 The Democrats call President Trump a dictator, but it is Orange County, Florida’s Democrat mayor who is is instituting a $15,000 fine for businesses who fail to enforce his orders. Florida law prohibits local officials from taking action against individuals for failing to follow CDC guidelines, so the mayor will instead fine businesses thousands of dollars for failing to enforce his unlawful orders. If a person fails to follow the orders of the mayor as relayed by the business, they can be arrested for trespassing. 

This is demanding that businesses enforce illegal orders. 

By Divemedic, ago