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Month: May 2022
The Chopper, an S&W Model 66, as re-imagined by Tiger McKee of Shootrite Academy.
The big white dot of the front sight centers on the target as your finger rolls the trigger back, so smoothly it feels like an oiled ball bearing. The recoil of the .357 Magnum round is more reassuring than painful and the stippled grip doesn’t move inside your grasp at all as the trigger slides smoothly back forward, the white ball already centered again on the shot group forming downrange.
You are shooting a “Chopper,” a sweet Smith & Wesson revolver made all the sweeter by the ministrations of one Tiger McKee.
If you’re well acquainted with the handgun world, you already know the name. Tiger McKee is a world-recognized authority on defensive shooting, as evidenced by the fact he writes the Tactics & Training column for this magazine’s sister publication, American Handgunner. He earned his fame with two classic guns of his generation, the 1911 .45 pistol and the AR15 rifle, but admits to a love for revolvers. For a number of reasons, he thinks they’re good choices for armed citizen carry — and he improves them.
Muzzle re-shaped and counterbored. Note protective sight wings.
Meet The Test Gun
The Chopper featured here is one of a pair he built for Roger Caudle, a regular customer who already owns two or three McKee revolvers. It began as a Model 66-1 from the good ol’ days before internal locks, with a 2.5″ barrel and S&W’s micrometer adjustable sight. It looks a lot different now.
Tiger explains, “I started out taking square butt, 4″ barrel K-Frame revolvers and turning them into the 3″ round butt configuration everyone wants now and can’t find. That left the ‘Smith & Wesson’ designation on the left side of the barrel and the caliber designation on the other side no longer centered, and I wound up milling the sides of the barrel flat. That solved the aesthetic issue, and also seemed to improve the balance of the gun. The balance element is the reason I do it on guns that are already the desired barrel length.”
This Chopper has distinctive sights. Tiger added an XS Big Dot front with tritium dot in the front, and the big, rugged fixed rear sight Cylinder & Slide Inc. makes to replace factory S&W adjustable sights. The humongous front sight is flanked by thin steel protective wings. The reshaped barrel is pleasantly sculpted, its muzzle re-crowned for accuracy and counter-bored for protection. Tiger has made this 66 a “triple lock” with a spring-loaded ball bearing on the crane, giving the Chopper a three-point cylinder lockup. Tiger does a “melt” rounding of all sharp edges on the revolver. The backstrap of the grip-frame is lightly stippled and so are the Hideout grips from Brownells. The most expensive and time-consuming part of the full Chopper job, Tiger says, is reshaping and narrowing the trigger guard to allow faster access by the index finger. The gun is finished in Gun Kote, this sample being Magpul FDE for the frame and Magpul Stealth Gray for trigger, hammer, cylinder and traditional style cylinder release.
Another nice touch — the front edges of the cylinder are chamfered, allowing for smoother re-holstering: an important and often overlooked subtlety.
Which leaves the trigger work. Ah, the trigger work …
Added lock on yoke, unique barrel treatment are seen here.
CCI Lawman .38 +P gave us our best group with the Chopper.
The Chopper in Action
Externally, he radiuses and polishes the trigger itself (“For fighting, not target shooting,” as he puts it), and bobs the hammer. Tiger explains, “All metal-to-metal contact points are honed and polished. I’ve had a lot of people help me learn to tune one, like Roy Huntington. Correct tolerances are critical. The springs are Wolff. I use their standard hammer spring — a little lighter than factory but still giving positive ignition even with the hardest primers. I put in a 14-lb. rebound spring for faster trigger return.”
On the Chopper’s first of many range runs, I invited along Alan Davis and his son Owen. Alan is a many-time Stock Service Revolver division champion in major IDPA matches, and his first reaction to pulling the Chopper’s trigger was “Ooh. This is nice!”
My sentiments exactly. The trigger is hospitable to the finger, reset is indeed fast and the DA pull runs around 10 lbs. but feels a lot less because it’s so smoo-ooth. Like J.H. Fitzgerald, the legendary Colt guy who created the famed Fitz Special, Tiger leaves the bobbed hammer’s single action capability in place — sub-3 lbs. — for the customer who thinks he just might one day need a crisp short pull for a precision shot. You start the trigger back until enough of the stubbed hammer has risen for the support hand thumb to catch it, or he’ll make it double-action only, your choice.
We found ourselves shooting way low putting the Big Dot all the way into the U-notch of the rear sight, “ball in basket,” the way we shoot S&W Nightguards and 340 M&Ps so equipped. With the front sight up higher, we were on target, and Owen was soon going six for six on the falling plates. A call to Tiger elicited the info this particular customer preferred a sight picture with the Big Dot up out of the notch and the tritium dot level with the top edge of the rear sight. Two lessons: Don’t trust the other guy’s sights ’til you’ve shot the gun, and — Tiger McKee will make your gun exactly the way you want it.
The work ain’t cheap, but it’s so much in demand he has a four- to six-month wait time. From what I saw and felt shooting it, it’s worth the wait! You can reach Tiger McKee to discuss what you want through Shootrite.org or write him at Shootrite, 98 Lois Lane, Langston, Ala. 35755.
Warning over ‘summer of violence’ with kids pressured to carry guns in US warzones after shooting deaths hit record high
THERE are fears that this summer will bring wild west-like gun violence in US cities where even good kids feel pressure to carry guns.
This feeling of an impending storm follows Monday’s CDC analysis of shooting deaths during the pandemic, which reached levels America hasn’t seen since 1968 and disproportionately impacted black men.
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Firearms were involved in 79 per cent of all homicides in 2020 – a 35 per cent increase from 2019 – according to a May 10 report published by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
There were 19,384 gun murders in 2020, which surpassed the previous high of 18,253 recorded by the CDC in 1993.
The sky high number of firearm murders coincided with the pandemic-fuelled spike in gun sales, according to Pew Research.
“In 2020, the number of monthly federal background checks for gun purchases was consistently at least 20 percent higher than in the same month in 2019,” Pew Research said in its September report.
“It’s about to be a crazy summer. You can feel it in the air,” Damon Jones told The Sun.
Jones, who spent three decades in law enforcement, is New York State’s representative of Blacks in Law Enforcement of America and publishes the local newspaper Black Westchester.
The paper covers issues impacting black communities in Westchester County, New York and focuses on the predominantly black city of Mount Vernon, which is a few miles north of the Bronx.
AJ Woodson, Black Westchester’s editor and journalist, said he met a straight-A high school student who stays out of trouble that told him that he feels unsafe in his neighborhood without a gun.
“There’s one youth, a real good kid, who admitted he carries a gun because everyone else has one,” Woodson said.
“He’s scared to go to the store without it. He’s scared to go to the movies without it … Our children are living in a war zone, and there’s no where to go to unpack their trauma.”
Woodson’s single anecdote is representative of a key finding in the CDC’s report about gun violence during the pandemic.
The firearm murder rate among black men between the ages of 10 and 44 was 21.6 times higher among than white men of the same age.
The number-based report didn’t reach any conclusions about why there was such a drastic leap in firearm deaths during the pandemic or why black communities were hit the hardest.
GUNS ARE THE EFFECT. WHAT’S THE CAUSE?
“It’s 6.30 in the morning, and we turn on the TV at work and there’s always a story about someone getting shot,” Jones said.
“After awhile, you say what’s going on? Where’s black lives matter? There were protests against police brutality, but what about the black lady shot while sitting at a stop sign? All black lives should matter.”
In Woodson and Jones’ hometown, 13-year-old Shamoya McKenzie was killed in December 2016 when a stray bullet intended for a rival gang member pierced the passenger side of her mom’s car.
A recent burst of violence included a shooting outside of the city high school, a melee involving dozens of students and a beloved cheerleader who was murdered.
“When I was growing up, we had places to go. Three or four days out of the week, we would play pool to stay off the streets,” Woodson said. “And if i had a serious issue, I could talk to someone.”
“I was a coin flip. A lot of my friends spent double digit years in prison. I could’ve been one of them if I didn’t have places to go.
“But now, there are no programs for our youth, and then they wonder why our youth are out in the streets. What do you expect the kids to do?”
And then there’s a cycle of violence and trauma that reaches back to the kids’ parents and grandparents.
“There’s generational trauma in our communities,” Woodson said.
“These are kids trying to figure it out when adults aren’t able to. And all of that trauma builds up, and most of the time it comes out in a way that’s not positive.”
US IS AT A ‘CROSSROADS’
Jones said the CDC’s report shows how the US is “at a crossroads.”
“As someone who champions criminal justice reform, I think the narrative has gone too far. We need policing but good policing.
“Now we need to invest more in reform and social issues and mental health services that have been cut in our communities.
“You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to see there was something wrong with the Brooklyn subway shooter. We have to address mental health and social issues in the black communities.”
Jones and Woodson said they’ve been pushing for federal prosecutors to go after the gun traffickers like the DEA has been clamping down on narcotic suppliers.
“What plagues our communities are guns and drugs, none of this is being made in our community; they’re being brought in,” Woodson said.
Building off the point, Jones said, “The young brother who has to have a gun to go to the store can get jammed up and face stiffer penalties, but there’s no increase in sentencing for gun trafficking.
“Those laws need to have stiffer penalties and the gun manufacturers need to know where their guns are going.
“We know of a gun trafficker who has been caught but hasn’t spent a day in jail because they say he’s a small fish and they want a big fish. Meanwhile, illegal guns continue to come into our city.”
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Isaiah Lee, 23, was charged instead by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office with single misdemeanor counts of battery, possession of a weapon with intent to assault, unauthorized access to the stage area during a performance and commission of an act that delays an event or interferes with a performer.
“This alleged attack has got to have consequences,” City Attorney Mike Feuer said in a video statement announcing the charges.
Feuer — a candidate for Los Angeles mayor — added, “My office takes protecting public safety extremely seriously and we are going to vigorously prosecute this case.”
I’m sure that Feuer, who’s a longtime anti-gun activist, will be happy to soak up the press attention that he’ll get for prosecuting Lee, who allegedly had a replica handgun that disguised a knife blade in his hand as he rushed the stage and tackled Chappelle on Tuesday evening. But should his office really be the one to handle this case? The misdemeanor charges aren’t likely to result in much time behind bars if Lee is convicted, and honestly, if his victim weren’t a celebrity the odds of him avoiding jail entirely would be in his favor.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Gascon’s office declined to pursue felony charges because while Lee had a weapon on him, he never had the chance to use it on his target, and since Chappelle wasn’t injured, the crime didn’t rise to the level of a felony assault with a deadly weapon regardless of Lee’s intentions.
This is a pretty high-profile example of Gascon’s alleged leniency towards criminal defendants, and it comes as the organizers of the recall campaign against the prosecutor announced they’ve hit a milestone in their efforts to gather enough signatures to get the recall on the ballot this fall.
Today, the Recall DA George Gascon campaign announced it has collected over 400,000 signatures as of May 1st, with thousands more being turned in daily. The recall campaign has now raised over $6 million to support the effort. To get the recall on the ballot, the campaign must collect 566,857 signatures from registered Los Angeles County voters (10% of the total current registered voters). The deadline for submission to the Registrar is July 6, 2022. “We are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel – there is a legitimate pathway to qualifying the recall by the July 6th deadline if we do not let up.”
The recall campaign might want canvass for signatures outside some of the comedy clubs in L.A. and ask patrons, employees, and comedians to sign on after Gascon’s decision, because while it might be legally defensible, it’s likely to be pretty unpopular at a time when crime continues to surge in Los Angeles and many residents say they feel increasingly unsafe.