Interesting perspective.
http://brillianter.com/Over at Walls of the City there is a post up about customization and adding accessories to your firearms. Linoge and I clearly do not agree on this topic.
The general rule regarding firearm modifications is: “Don’t” This is because every modification and gadget has a liability associated with it. Generally if you change something the gun does not work as well as it did before. Yes, there are exceptions and yes there are things that guns really need to have that don’t come stock. I am sure that I am going to get some comments about performance optimization from the competition shooters, so let me temper that a little bit: I am a defensive shooter. I have shot competition occasionally, but when I do, I shoot it with my regular equipment.
What does this gadget do for me? That is the one question that people seem to have so much trouble parsing. As an example: a barrel shroud will keep you from burning yourself on your shotgun barrel, but the manufacturer didn’t see the need to put one on. Maybe that is because burning yourself on the barrel of your shotgun is not a problem: there are no operator controls on the barrel (so there isn’t any reason to be handling it) and you have to be doing heck of a lot of shotgun shooting in a very short period of time to make this an issue.
Am I going to use whatever added capability I am gaining? I could put a bipod on my rifle, but it isn’t going to make my rifle any better for my intended role of self defense. It might make it easier to be accurate from the prone on the range or in the field, but it’s not going to help me to shoot the bad guy that is in my house – in fact the added weight and bulk on the front of the gun is going to make it more difficult to operate.
You can justify anything. To yourself. If you want to trick out your gun with every cool gadget under the sun, more power to you, just don’t expect me to buy into your reasoning for why something is a must-have. I have seen a lot of guns with a lot of gadgets over the years and I have seen very few trick guns that both work reliably AND that the owner can operate. In generally I find most accessories and customizations to be technical solutions to training problems. Personally I assign far more cool points to those that can quickly and efficiently hit the target than those that have latest and greatest gizmo.
Observe the pros. If there is a consensus between what the top people in the field are using then that is probably a good choice. This is not an appeal to authority, but rather an attempt to skip reinventing the wheel, and rediscovering a bunch of stuff that is detrimental for your intended application.
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