Wonder Materials!

We are gun types. As a breed, pretty conservative.

It’s why it takes a while to get us to switch from what worked 100 years ago, (wood and iron) to what can work today, (plastic and scandium type wonder metals). Sure, there are valid reasons to eschew the new until it is tested, but eventually we get beyond that with proven materials.

The conservativeness is not just in material, but in methods. How you hold and how you shoot.

The M-16 was introduced 50 years ago, with no wooden stock. But NOW people are finally getting around to messing with stock shape to make it easier to shoot. Look at the forestock dingus on the AR on this blog entry. A different way to grip it, less intrusive that just a pole that sticks out of the bottom. Maybe a BETTER way. We shall see. And made more possible by the materials we make forestocks out of. A block of walnut would work, but this plastic thingy can be lighter and less fragile than wood. Yay, plastics. And the feature of THIS improvement is that no new instruction is needed, and the feature is taken to naturally. Well, that’s nice.

It’s not just stuff like that. What an infantry soldier carries around to help him now, routinely, is miles ahead of what someone carried 25 years ago. Camelbacks, IR illumination and scopes, eyes-open red-dot optics, GPS location. The electronics is becoming smaller and lighter and less fragile all the time, too.

And it won’t just stop there. If someone figures a better way to hold a firearm, and not just with a new grip style, but by a radical new stock shape, AND that new things works better than what we do now, eventually that new, superior method will get through the conservative sensibilities and adopted. What form will that radical shape take? How about a pistol that wraps around your wrist like a fat sweat band and holds 50 rounds? Maybe? No? How about the US Army equipped with nothing but Cooper style bolt action Scout rifles? No? I really have no idea what that new form will be. If I did I’d patent it and get rich. But it could be comin’ down the pike even now.


It’s just fascinating. Whether or not the dingus is a revolutionary new method, or whether it's just a gimmick and will fade away in a year or two. .357 or .44 Special. Wing tip votice vertical stabilizer thingummy or personal jet-pack...