I get asked about this occasionally and the primary source link seems to disappear/move:

http://www.casr.ca/id-arcticviking4sb-1.htm

There it is, in writing, proof that the world's most elite cold weather warriors carry Glock 20 10mm's.

The choice of a Sirius Patrol pistol was also determined  by concerns about encounters with aggressive polar bears. Most Danish units use 9mm automatics like the CF but the Sirius Patrol  learned  through hard experience that 9mms had insufficient 'stopping power' to deal with angry adult polar bears. As a result, Sirius Patrol members carry a more powerful 10mm pistols for self-defence, employing the 10mm Glock 20 automatic.[3]

and the footnote:

[3] The CF's 9mm Browning has begun to show its great age. The Danish approach to automatic pistols is well worth emulating. Perhaps DND should consider issuing a modern 9mm automatic to southern units and 10mm Glocks to northern Canadian Rangers as well as any 'southern' troops who are preparing to deploy to the north.

Neat.

Here is another description too:

http://www.specialoperations.com/Foreign/Denmark/

Slaedepatruljen Sirius - The Sledgepatrol Sirius (Arctic LRRP; Navy)

This very special unit maintains a permanent military presence in the arctic regions of North/Northeast Greenland. It's origins can be traced back to the WWII experience with "Operation Resolute", where a guerilla-force of hunters tracked and eliminated German meteorological stations. These stations would have provided vital weather forecasts to the German air force and navy.
In its present form, Sirius is based on small two man patrols with a dog sledge and 11 dogs. The service time is 25 months without any leave and the only outside contact, besides by radio, is the annual supply ship. The main patrolling activity is carried out in the 4 month winter period, where wind speeds of 100 knots or temperatures below -40 can occur. Under these conditions, the patrols must cover several thousand kilometers to complete their designated routes. This objective can only be achieved by using dogsleds, as snowmobiles would be noisy, require vast amounts of fuel, break down and be unable to warn against polar bears.  Ultimately: You can't eat a snowmobile in a survival situation!
The weapons carried also reflect the harsh conditions. Only bolt-action rifles (M17/M53) performs reliably. The standard SIG210 Neuhausen sidearm was recently replaced by the 10mm Glock 20, as the stopping power of multiple 9mm rounds proved to be insufficient against a polar bear. The members are recruited from the regular services and must be sergeants at least. They may not be married or otherwise engaged and the selection procedure stresses the psychological evaluation of their personality. Of course, they must also achieve top marks at the NATO Arctic Warfare School in Norway.

Alaska State Troopers episode: Alaskan Standoff

This was an interesting episode that I saw this week (2/26) as a resident shot and killed two moose with a Glock 20 10mm to save his dog from continuing to be trampled.

We know it was FMJ ammo as the AST asked the resident to confirm that it was not hollow point ammo. Why that makes a difference (from a LEO standpoint) I am not sure, but more penetration from a hardcast or FMJ would be better in this case any way.

When asked how many rounds were used the resident said it was about 4. hmm..appears that the 10mm is indeed a good defense for the woods and pretty good for hunting too.

10mm enthusiasts knew that, but there are always some that seem to want more proof.

This is a good article on "Surprising Anti-gun celebrities" from Guns & Ammo. I was surprised at a couple of them. Most of them are just hypocrites as they make money portraying characters that use firearms -- usually to save their lives. I guess it is ok for other people not to have firearms to protect themselves as long as you can still have your own personal armed security to protect you.

LINK TO G&A SURPRISING ANTI-GUN CELEBRITIES

Some people will say that these celebrities have the right to their own opinion. This is true. However, I have the right NOT to spend my hard-earned $ supporting them. And I can and will not support them based on their anti-gun views.

Some of them actually openly state they actually want to take YOUR guns away ("door to door")!  Not a penny of my $ to them.

There is much contention about which round would/should replace 5.56 NATO. I doubt that anything will at this time due to our huge investment and general funding climate. If anyone does first I think that it will be MARSOC.

Anyway, if you follow the 6.8 debates on the internet you often hear that the 6.8 is a military-used or tested cartridge. Detractors usually say that it is not true and that there is no evidence that it was ever used despite that some of the folks stating first-hand knowledge are pretty credible. (Not to mention the comments from companies like Black Hills and Silver State Armory). But, as written proof I submit the following quote (and link and pdf) from folks that know a little something about M16/M4/AR15's:

LMT Press Release

The 6.8 has been used by Special Forces troops in Afghanistan with much success. As the obvious benefits of the 6.8 become more apparent, the US Army is taking the caliber under consideration to replace the 5.56 currently carried by US troops. The 6.8 has proven to be more accurate at longer ranges and have greater hitting power than the 5.56.

 

LMT should be known to anyone posting anything on an internet forum discussing the AR platform. If not, a quick Google should fix that. They are pretty well regarded :)

website: LMT PR LINK

Yes, it is a little old (2006) but I am not arguing that it is going to be replacing the 5.56 just that it had been used/tested.

Download the PR (pdf) : PR_LMT_6_8_barrel

I emailed Hazard4 about some upcoming products and asked them if they offered an NRA Instructor Discount. They replied back that they did and to send in a copy of credentials for an order and there would be a discount.

I didn't get exact details as the product I was inquiring about won't come out until later this year, but anyone ordering should definitely ask.

Charter Arms has been talking about this for a couple of years but I hear that the 40S&W Pit Bull is now shipping!

This snub is about 20oz and a 5-shot. Its big advantage is that it fires 40S&W! More importantly EXTRACTS the cartridges without the need of full moon or half moon clips. I nice trick considering the 40S&W is a rimless (nothing for the extractor star to grab onto) semi-auto round (ok, ok, semi-rimmed but still not normally doable in a revolver).

I know some folks sneer at CharCo and it has been a long time since I have owned one, but they have a long history of innovation. You know the 'drop safety' that all modern revolvers have today? That was pioneered by CharCo and GIVEN to gun companies royalty free!

I seem to be carrying 40S&W a lot and it is definitely a lot less expensive to shoot than 357mag but more punch than 38SPL (IMO) although I do wonder about speedloaders?

Definitely neat and worth checking out. Oh, 9mm (+P rated) will be coming out shortly and 45ACP later.

Charter Arms Co. Pitbull 40 Product Page

Pic from their website:

This is a great editorial shedding truth on some arguments propagated by the anti-gun lobby --  the anti-gun rhetoric simply doesn't add up.

Forbes.com article: Disarming the Myths Promoted By the Gun Control Lobby

Complete text follows:

"As much as gun control advocates might wish otherwise, their attacks are running out of ammo. With private firearm ownership at an all-time high and violent crime rates plunging, none of the scary scenarios they advanced have materialized. Abuse of responsibility by armed citizens is rare, while successful defensive interventions against assaults on their lives and property are relatively commonplace.

National violent crime rates that soared for 30 years from the early 1960s began to decrease markedly since 1993. Last December the FBI reported that murder and other violent crime rates fell again by 6.4% during the first half of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. A Gallup poll indicates that “Americans’ preference regarding gun laws is generally that the government enforce existing laws more strictly and not pass new laws.”

Caroline Brewer of the anti-gun Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has reported that “The research we’ve seen indicates fewer and fewer people owning more and more guns.” Yet one can only wonder where they are getting that information. In reality, public support for personal gun ownership is growing. According to Steve Sanetti, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group that represents about 7,000 firearms manufacturers and related companies, in 1959 some 70% of the American public favored handgun bans, whereas today that number has flipped. This support is reflected in the marketplace. Sanetti observes that the $4.1 billion gun industry “has had nineteen months of growth in an otherwise anemic economy.”

Recognizing these positive trends, most states now issue permits allowing qualified law-abiding people to legally carry handguns outside their homes. Unprecedented numbers are becoming licensed to do so, now totaling an estimated 10 million Americans, contributing, in turn, to a dramatic growth in gun sales.

A record of more than 1.5 million background checks for customers looking to purchase a firearm were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Background Check (NICS) system last December. About one-third of these occurred during the six weeks before Christmas. They had previously recorded a 49% rise in background checks during the week before President Obama was elected in 2008 compared with the same week one year earlier.

The Brady lobby is upset that there has been no progress in leveraging tighter gun control legislation following the shooting January 8, 2010 rampage that killed 6 people and injured 13, including Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords. That tragic incident raised serious questions about background checks after it was determined that the accused shooter, having previously exhibited erratic behavior, legally purchased the weapon he “allegedly” used from a store.

The National Rifle Association clearly agrees that guns should not be sold to individuals found to have serious mental problems, although many states fail to provide mental health records to the federal computerized background check system. According to a November, 2011 report by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), 23 states have shown “major failures” in complying, and four (Alaska, Delaware, Idaho and Rhode Island) submit no records at all. (Although murder has been in decline in New York and other major cities for years, a Pepsi and Honda Super Bowl advertisement spot featured New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston’s Thomas Menino on a couch calling for stricter government measures to curb illegal gun sales.)

Dennis Henigan, the Brady group’s acting president, told Reuters: “Really it is a national disgrace that the only piece of gun-related legislation to come to a vote since Tucson was this legislation that would have enabled dangerous concealed carriers like Jared Loughner to carry their guns across state lines.” Referring to a proposed “National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011″ (H.R. 822) which has passed the House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate, the resolution would require states to recognize one another’s concealed carry permits the same way they recognize one another’s driver’s licenses. The intent is to eliminate confusion and potential legal problems for traveling gun owners.

As pointed out in a recent paper titled “Tough Targets” released by the Cato Institute, “The ostensible purpose of gun control legislation is to reduce firearm deaths and injuries. But authors Clayton E. Cramer and David Burnett believe these restrictions put law-abiding citizens at a distinct disadvantage to criminals who acquire guns from underground markets since it is simply not possible for police officers to get to every scene where intervention is urgently needed. They also document large numbers of crimes…murders, assaults, robberies…that are thwarted each year by ordinary persons with guns.

A widely-known study conducted by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz in the 1990s found that there were somewhere between 830,000 and 2.45 million U.S. defensive gun uses annually. A National Crime Victimization Study (NCVS) which asked victims if they had used a gun in self-defense found that about 108,000 each year had done so. A big problem with the NCVS line of survey reasoning, however, is that it only includes those uses where a citizen kills a criminal, not when one is only wounded, is held by the intended victim until police arrive, or when brandishing a gun caused a criminal to flee.

For these reasons, the Cato researchers investigated published news reports which much more often reveal how Americans use guns in self-defense. The data set is derived from a collection of nearly 5,000 randomly selected incidents published between October 2003 and November 2011. Still, the authors also recognize limitations with this approach, since many defensive incidents are never reported by victims, or when they are, never get published. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the successful self-defense outcomes are those where the defendants’ guns are presented but never fired.

Most of the actual self-defense shootings in the Cato study didn’t involve concealed carry licenses, but more typically had to do with responses to residential invasions. Of these, 488 involved home burglaries. In addition, there were 1,227 incidents where intruders were induced to flee the scene by armed inhabitants, circumstances that might otherwise have resulted in injurious assaults including rapes and murders. There were 285 news accounts indicating that the defender had a concealed weapon license, which in the majority of these incidents took place outside a home or place of business. Pizza delivery drivers were common robbery targets.

Whereas gun control proponents often argue that having a gun put people at risk because a criminal will take it away and use it against them, it seems the reality is more often to be the reverse situation. The Cato data contains only 11 stories out of 4,699 where a criminal took a gun away from a defender, but 277 where the intended victim disarmed the bad guy, although the authors acknowledge that these event reports may be printed more frequently due to newsworthiness.

Still, it should also be remembered that the threatened party often has more motivation to fight back than a criminal hoping for an easy score. There were 25 news reports where armed rape attack victims ultimately got the upper hand, and 65 where this occurred in carjacking attempts.

Then there is the argument that more private gun ownership will lead to more accidents because the average citizen isn’t sufficiently trained to use a weapon defensively. While gun accidents do occur, the Cato study indicates that they are the most overstated risks. There were 535 accidental firearms deaths in 2006 within a population of almost 300 million people. Although every lost life is tragic, the proportion is not particularly startling.

On the other hand, Newsweek has reported that law-abiding American citizens using guns in self-defense during 2003 shot and killed two and one-half times as many criminals as police did, and with fewer than one-fifth as many incidents as police where an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal (2% versus 11%).

Finally, on the subject of public safety, just how well have gun bans worked in other countries? Take the number of home break-ins while residents are present as an indication. In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, nearly half of all burglaries occur when residents are present. But in the U.S. where many households are armed, only about 13% happen when someone is home.

Doesn’t this comparison offer some indication that criminals are getting the message? Don’t you wish those bent on eliminating our Second Amendment rights would also?"

Pretty rare Hornady has an ammo recall.

Link: Hornady Press Release

Hornady Manufacturing Company is recalling seven (7) lots of Item#9249, 500 S&W 300gr. FTX Custom Pistol Ammunition. These lots were shipped between September 9, 2010, and October 17, 2011.

Item number 9249, Lot Numbers:

• 3101327
• 3110256
• 3110683
• 3110695
• 3110945
• 3111388
• 3111885

ornady Manufacturing Company ballisticians have determined that some cartridges from Lot #’s 3101327, 3110256, 3110683, 3110695, 3110945, 3111388, 3111885, may exhibit excessive chamber pressures. Use of this product may result in firearm damage and or personal injury.

DO NOT USE HORNADY CUSTOM PISTOL AMMUNITION
ITEM #9249, 500 S&W 300gr. FTX, FROM THE ABOVE LISTED LOT NUMBERS.

The lot number can be found printed on the lower portion of the box label.

THIS NOTICE ONLY APPLIES TO LOT #’s 3101327, 3110256, 3110683, 3110695, 3110945, 3111388, 3111885. If you own any one of these Lot #’s or have any questions regarding this recall, please call 800-338-1242. Hornady Mfg Company will make all arrangements associated with this return and replacement of the product.

ANY OTHER LOT NUMBERS OR ITEM NUMBERS ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THIS RECALL AND REQUIRE NO ACTION.

Thank you for your attention. We apologize for this inconvenience.

Not really firearms related, but an interesting read.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-glock-trial-starts20120220,0,431224.story

Someone asked about the Wilderness 5 stitch and in-the-waistband (IWB) carry. My original post neglected to mention IWB.

I have had the opportunity to try out a couple of different holsters and come up with some thoughts...

CompTac CTAC with Glock 23: No problem what-so-ever. Very comfortable and usable. Wore it out to dinner with the wife without any concerns.

Crossbreed SuperTuck Deluxe with fullsize M&P: Same as above except that I didn't wear it out to dinner

C5Leather with Dan Wesson Commander (1911 with 4.25" barrel): This is a hard-body leather holster with a reinforced mouth and a loop on each side for retention.

This setup is considerably heavier and bulkier than the first two. It was noticeably easier to put it on as my Galco belts are so thick that it is often hard to thread it through the holster.

The cinching ability of the Wilderness was also nice as you can adjust it perfectly!

After about an hour of trekking around hills with my dog it felt that the extra weight caused the top of the pistol (grip) not to snug up against my body. Good thing that it cinches. Here I think that thick leather has the advantage of keeping a pistol snugly against your body.

Unfortunately, I don't have any IWB holsters for my bigger/heavier pistols, but I suspect it is the same - ok for short periods of time but for extended duration carry I would opt for the "CSM" (polymer lined) belt which is stiffer.