That Was Me

Yesterday there was another accident at a busy, light controlled, intersection near here.

The same intersection The Lovely Harvey was rear-ended at.

I'm sitting there waiting for the debris to be cleared with a deputy standing next to my driver's side window.

I roll down the window and say to the deputy, "You know what would stop accidents from happening here?  They should put in a light!"

The deputy got nailed by the grenade joke.

A common refrain at county commission meetings on our two main roads after an accident is that a light would have prevented it (often when a light clearly would have had no effect).

So, fellow residents of my county, I apologize for rendering a deputy unfit for duty for several minutes.

Tinkering

As I do more tinkering to the Mausers, I find I am becoming more attached to the ugly one than the pretty one.

I find that odd.

Hidden Figures

I have not seen Hidden Figures yet.

I wonder if they're going to mention that Ms Johnson was hired when Dwight Eisenhower, a known Republican, was president.  Though the barrier to hiring a black woman for such a job was lowered in 1943 by the Roosevelt-32 (as opposed to Roosevelt-26), it's noteworthy that it wasn't put back in place after World War 2.

Now I only hope it's a good movie.

Red Tails sure wasn't.  HBO did a much better job than Lucas with their Tuskegee Airmen.

Color Coordinated

The pour-your-own AR lowers can be made in a variety of colors.

I did purple to match a set of Cavalry Manufacturing furniture.

Marv did blue to match his Cav. Mfg. stuff.

He's wanted a blue sling for a while.

He's put Damage Ind. SHTF Brown furniture on his SBR, and he wanted a brown sling for that.

I directed him to Echo Sling, who did a great job with my purple sling on Valentine.

Since Marv is trying to color match, they sent him swatches!

Now, that's service!

If you need a 1", near indestructible, nylon web sling in just about any color imaginable, click that link and give them some business!

Satanic Embrace

Ever since I got Agnes, Willard has been disapprovingly clucking at my choice of chambering.

Almost as if he feels that being a disciple of Jack O'Connor is something to be ashamed of!

Since .30-06 is God's Own Caliber (Old Testament) as opposed to .270 WCF being Satan's Own or something...

Really .280 Remington is Satan's caliber.

Honest.

IT'S IN REVELATIONS! PEOPLE!

At any rate, he's been doing the not-so-subtle hinting that I should plunk down on something in an "American" caliber.  Apparently, New Haven, Connecticut was not on the continent of North America nor part of the United States in 1925.

He was there, he would know.

One of the local pawn shops has a Savage 111XP that's a plastic polymer synthetic version of Agnes, but in .30-06 for $450 list.  Same scope even.

A shop we've been avoiding for some reason (probably too easy to find a parking place, that's a bad sign for a gun shop) used to have a Winchester 670 in .30-06 for $400ish, but it's been a while so it's prolly fled by now.

I notice he never names a price on that Winchester 670A he got there.

Heck, Willard HAS a Winchester Model 70 (that he never conceal carries) he could just give me... but apparently mumble mumble belonged to his grandfather, mutter mutter sentimental value, growl growl HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT A PRE-64 GOES FOR?!?! 

I guess I will just have to suffer on in my Heresy.

Is It Really So Hard

Something I just noticed about ordering from Primary Arms.

The package was shipped out the same day the label was created.

Ever since UPS Mail Innovations and FedEx Smartpost got started, it seems like places such as Brownells and Midway can't manage to get stuff out the door.

The label is generated the day after the order, it sits for at least a whole day then three to four days in transit to the USPS who take two to three days to get it to my door.  Six to eight days in reality.

If you look at the time estimates there's no difference between USPS Priority Mail, UPS Ground and UPS Mail Innovations.  But Priority Mail will do four days, and UPS Ground is five.  And they charge you like they're premium services too.

Last night I created the same order at Midway and Primary Arms.

Same price for the items ordered.

Midway wanted $7.59 for UPS Mail Innovations, $10.59 for UPS Ground, and $11.59 for USPS Priority Mail.

Primary Arms, on the other hand, wants $7.23 for UPS Ground and $8.13 for USPS Priority Mail.

Cheaper and faster?  Sign me up!

But at one time Midway was super fast too.  Something changed, and not for the better.

No Wonder I'm Bad At It

Facebook and Blogs are part of "social media".

No wonder I suck at them.  I'm no good at the social part.

Starting Shit

I chewed out a woman who left her cart smack in the middle of a handicapped space at the grocery store tonight.

Her tattooed and biker looking boyfriend looked like he was going to get mad and involved for a moment.

He glared, thought, then said, "Honey, he's right."

As consolation, I took the cart with me when I did my shopping.

Must Be Doing Something Right

I have a Glock 17 IWB right now in 40" waistband jeans.

Last time I tried this I needed 42" to get them buttoned.

Available

A while back I had plans to convert Agnes from the Axis style detachable magazine to Savage's Premium DBM style.

While the Premium DBM magazines are more expensive than the Axis style, they're supposed to be better.

The more I look at it, the less sure I am of that claim.  Because the difference between the two magazines is the floor plate.  They use the exact same body, spring and follower.

The difference in the floor plate is because they use different means of latching.

The Axis has the plastic hook, the Premium has a notch and the latch is a lever on the gun.

I've been mulling it for a while and noticed something at five stocking Savage dealers.

The only Premium DBM magazines they have are in the guns they're selling with them.  But they have spare Axis mags in abundance.

Even if the Axis latch is a fragile piece of crap, I can buy three replacement magazines for what the conversion costs, and I can actually buy replacement magazines at the local stores on short notice in the case of a breakage.  If they ever fix their web page, you can even buy replacement floor plates too.

Status Symbol

While reading up on the F-35 program and the similar competing programs in Russia and China in making 5th generation fighters, I am a bit reminded of battleships.

A battleship was a must-have item for any nation who wanted to be counted as a power.

They were eye wateringly expensive.

They became so expensive that there appeared to be a great reluctance to put them where another battleship could shoot at them.

They were also scary enough to the other side that much planning and effort went into neutralizing them.

I wonder if we're seeing something of a rhyming repeat here.

End All Beat All

The TM and FM I posted earlier, I notice, tell you to tap the forward assist to make sure the gun weapon is loaded bolt is seated when loaded.

I also notice that the Air Force doesn't require it.

That probably stems from the Air Force, like the Marines, seeing no need for such frippery (unlike the Marines) got their own version of the M16.

Both Stoner and Sullivan were of the opinion that the forward assist was unnecessary.

The Army insisted on it, though, and the Marines got told they were getting the same weapon as the Army.  Don't worry, they got their revenge with the M16A2 and made the Army accept a lot of features they didn't want.

I am of the same opinion as Stoner and Sullivan about that forward assist, the only time I'd ever used it to keep the gun functioning was with blanks on a really worn out M16A1 in OSUT.  The majority of the times I've mashed that thing have been when instructed to in order to pass a drill.

Those manuals also still teach S.P.O.R.T.S.  Which turned out worse than useless for clearing the most common jam that happened to us; a double feed.  That was caused by the well worn black-follower 30-rounders.

With the magazine being the prime culprit, we were much better served by an immediate action that consisted of locking the bolt to the rear then ripping out the magazine.  It doesn't lend itself to a good mnemonic acronym though.  It was also not endorsed by TRADOC.

I'm perfectly willing to endorse different ways of doing things against the official word if they work.  I am flat refusing to accept the explanation "because I said so" from someone who is not paying me as the reason for doing it that way.

Real Fear

I'm the parent of a mentally disabled white man.

We call him The Boy around here.

What happened in Chicago really strikes home because The Boy is apt to go walkabout and he's fairly trusting.

If anyone were to hurt him as those thugs hurt that man, denial of bail would have a different term, "protective custody".

I'd have to hurry to be the one who took vengeance too.

The Boy is very well loved by some very rough people.

Come to think on it, anyone who'd hurt him had better hope for real protective custody and solitary, because some of those rough people would happily get arrested for a chance.

I'm Not In "The Military"

Army FM 3-22.9 Rifle Marksmanship M16-/M4-Series Weapons.
12AUG08 with 10FEB11 updates.
Chapter 4 Section 1

2011 is rather more recent than my service dates...

It refers to Army TM 9-1005-319-10 aka Air Force TO.11W3-5-5-41 aka Navy SW 370-BU-OPI-010 Rev 1.
Here's 30JUN10.
Chapter 2 Section 6

Of particular note is the Air Force loads from the closed bolt while everyone else uses the open bolt.

Also of note is how both recent manuals show the charging handle's use (with brand new 2010 photographs replacing the God knows how old line drawings!) in accordance with how I said the designer's intended it to be used.

These manuals get revised and updated all the time, these are the newest ones I could find on the internet.  I would love to see a newer revision showing a different means of running the charging handle.  I kind of collect TM's and FM's...

The one-sided method of operating the charging handle that's de rigueur puts side loads on the thing it wasn't designed for.  It's been known to break them, in fact.  I've broken one this way, an expensive retro gray one too!  Guess how well your gun works with half a charging handle up inside the upper.

Guess how long that takes to fix.  Well, it's a good thing I'd learned how to transition to a handgun.

Most replacement charging handles, which I derisively refer to as "doo-dads and gee-gaws" don't much mitigate the stresses.  The work is mostly on making the latch less likely to tear out because the one-sided technique puts all the load on a teeny roll pin or making the latch unlatch from both sides.  There's a scant few that upgrade the slender stem to better take being pushed at an angle.

Facepalm

Reading someone touting the benefits of the longer sight radius on an M16A4 clone...

They show a picture of their rifle wearing a scope and no rear sight.

My point being that if you're talking about how much better the irons are because of length, you should really show off your gun with those sights to make your point.

Gun Free Zone Again

Shooting at Fort Lauderdale International.

Right on the cusp of the introduction of a bill that would have let people carry their guns in baggage claim too.

Update:

Air Canada doesn't allow checked handguns, I just checked their webpage.

I am very curious to find out if this was an international flight.

I Feel Better

There an angry screed in the drafts.

I feel better for having written it.

I would not feel better for having posted it.

It's very raw.

Maybe with some polish and another set of eyes to help edit it... some form of it may emerge.

But for now, here's the item that inspired the rant!

The Advantage Arms Forward Charging Handle!

Drink it in folks!

It don't get more doo-dad and gee-gaw than that.

Revisit

Talking with FuzzyGeff about the odds of hitting with that snubby in GURPS.

He mentioned that you get about a 10% chance to hit per shot at 6 or less.

He'd automatically done the PC math in his head and decided that since there's no chance of hitting with the full RoF to not fire the two extra rounds that are mathematically guaranteed to miss.

Looking at the numbers again, I realize that I forgot the additional -1 for firing a gun double action.

So a 5 or less, or almost half the chance to hit at 4.630% instead of 9.259% of 6 or less!

However, in Real-World™ the untrained fire at full rate of fire... but they're NPC's so, yeah.

So how does a typical PC fare at 7 yards?

First off, they typically run much higher DX and spend actual points on skills.  A skill of DX+2 on top of a DX of 12 or more is pretty reasonable.

Starting with a skill of 14, -1 for double action, -3 for range at 7-yards the PC has a 50-50 change to hit with the first round with a 10 or less and has an actual chance to connect with a second .357 Magnum pill on a 5 or less (4.630%).

It gets even better with the +P and it's Rcl 2 with a 10 or less (50.000%) for one, 8 or less (25.926%) for two and 6 or less for (9.259%) for three.

Yes, the PC has twice the chance of landing three rounds with .38 Special +P than two rounds of .357 Magnum.

FuzzyGeff is correct, though, no PC is going to waste that third shot from his Magnum.

Someone Missed A Point

House Republicans revive obscure rule that allows them to slash the pay of individual federal workers to $1.

An important quote from the article, "At the same time, opponents and supporters agree that the work of 2.1 million civil servants, designed to be insulated from politics, is now vulnerable to the whims of elected officials." bold added.

The civil service system was, indeed, designed to be insulated from politics.

Part of the deal, however, was that civil servants were supposed to stay out of politics.

Well, civil servants decided they needed to be political and broke the deal.

This is a chicken coming home to roost.

Of course, any legislation passed using the The Holman Rule is likely a bill of attainder...

Update:

I reread the article and while the Washington Post makes it seem like this will be targeting the rank-and-file apparatchiks of the civil services (can you almost hear the "what about these hard working people's children?"), I think that the real targets are the upper tiers of managers.

I wonder how many of those parasites will want the jobs without the rather generous salaries that would normally come with them.

He's Got A Lot To Answer For...

Say what you will about Richard Milhous Nixon, but at least when he said he'd get us out of Vietnam, we got out of Vietnam.

Mostly.

Ground troops anyway.

You know what I meant!

Unarmed And Unafraid

You know the man who puts those grips on his .25 ain't afraid of nothin'.

Old Things

I stumbled across my old Zippo today!

To no surprise, once I added fluid, it worked just fine.

This thing went everywhere I went for near 25 years.  I've owned it for more than 30 now.  Wow.

Letter To The Tallahassee Strain Of Congress Critter

This is someone from Arfcom's letter to his critters about the upcoming legislative session of our state congress.

Dear Fellow Floridians,

Although open and campus carry may cause discomfort between us, please consider whether discomfort alone warrants the restriction of an activity. Who is carrying, what and how are they carrying, and why are they carrying are all justified questions. Perhaps we can bridge the gap between our perceptions.

Who: The current proposals expand open carry to the people we already trust with concealed carry. As issues with concealed carry licensees have not shown themselves to be a societal problem, we hope the “who” of the equation is palatable.

What and how: These proposals do not change the weapons that licensees may carry; the manner in which they choose to carry may change. While open carry at the grocery store may be discomforting, at least at first, we believe the calm, polite, and friendly manner in which licensees currently conduct themselves will continue.

Where: The proposals reduce the number of places carry is prohibited. In an ironic way, if people see others carrying in the grocery store, they may become more comfortable with carry in other places as well. In any event, licensees conducting themselves in their usual calm demeanor should not alarm their fellow citizen.

Why: If licensees choose to carry openly over concealed, their reasons might be as varied as for owning a firearm in the first place. We are under the impression that licensees are generally good, law-abiding folks and will continue to carry for good, lawful reasons.

Police officers’ jobs: Police officers would have easier jobs if they didn’t have to get a warrant to enter a house, but we hold privacy dear enough to justify the process. Likewise, we believe the choice between open and concealed carry is important enough to justify a potential increased challenge to police officers. Other states’ police departments have adjusted without massive attrition or resentment.

Sheriff and college administration dissent: We appreciate the thoughtfulness these types of leaders employ in their service and positions respectively, but hold the people, through the legislative process, as the authority on these matters. We believe each individual has the right to choose to carry, and in what capacity, and that no individual should have the power to restrict the other’s right to do so.

Please consider the opportunity for licensed individuals to carry both concealed and openly by supporting these initiatives. If by chance doing so is a mistake, we can always change the law in the future. Thank you.

 That's beautiful!

Detail Strip

Today I tried to figure out why the the ugly one dropped the slide on magazine removal as well as insertion.

The problem really ends up being too few parts doing too many things.  The ejector, slide stop, and magazine disconnect are all the same part.  The spring which bears on it is also the magazine catch.

Now that I've detail stripped and cleaned everything up, I think that the spring has lost temper over the past 95 years.  Oh, and in the process I also managed to get the magazine disconnect working again!

It doesn't work with one of the magazines we have here.  It only works with the one that came with it, which appears to be an original Mauser mag.

The problem is in the right rear corner of the magazine of the aftermarket unit.  It's worn and rounded right where it needs to press up on the Swiss Army Ejector.  In effect, the gun doesn't think there's a magazine there.

The part doesn't look worn, and the aftermarket magazine works in the pretty one, I wonder if this, too, is tied to the spring being worn.  Can't get a new one, of course.

While discovering that the worn magazine works with the pretty one, I also discovered that it doesn't appear to have the magazine disconnect feature.  There looks to be a bit of filing on the area that should block the sear bar, but I'd really have to take them both completely apart and compare them side by side.

Meh.

The most nuked place on earth.

Every crater in this picture was made by a nuke.  It's in Nevada.

Picture is a screen shot of a Google Maps satellite image.

Tactical Pants

At times, when I am repairing the pockets of my jeans, I wonder if the bother is worth spending triple on something from 5.11.

The Damage It Is Pathetic

Ball ammo for .25 ACP is a whopping 1d pi-.

If we're shooting a thug in a cotton shirt that gives 1-6 raw damage which will be cut in half, so 1-3 points of actual damage.

You can buy hollow-point ammo for it, which upgrades the damage type one step, so pi- becomes pi.  But it also adds an armor divisor of 0.5 which doubles the DR of actual armor and gives things that aren't armor DR 1.

Now we're shooting through a shirt that has DR 1.  So 0-5 raw damage penetrates and does 0-5 points of actual damage!

What about averages?  Ball does 2 and HP does 2.  Huzzah, hit 'em again!

Pocket Revolver

This is a GURPS post, so real life could be significantly different.

S&W has made a five shot .357 Magnum J-Frame for a long, long time.

With magnum ammo it does 2d+2 pi out to 180/2,000 with ST 10 and Rcl 5.

With a moderate skill level, you're just not hitting with a second shot and you can fire 3 per round.

Colt is releasing a new version of the Detective Special Cobra in stainless that's rated for +P ammo.

.38 Special from a 2" barrel normally gets 2d-1 pi to 90/1,000 with ST 8 and Rcl 2.  You're much more likely to get multiple hits with the same skill level than with a magnum.

But what about the +P?  That's as good as a magnum, right?

GURPS High-Tech p. 165 gives a 10% bonus to damage and range and increases the ST by the same margin.

That ups the damage to 2d pi to 100/1,100 with ST 9 and Rcl 2.

Now...

Guns/TL is a DX/E skill with a default of DX-4 or another Guns/TL skill at -2.  The average person has a ST and DX of 10.

A point in any given skill is the equivalent of 200 hours of study on their own figuring it out for themselves.  What this means is the average person has a skill level of Guns/TL8 (Pistol) of 6.  With the +10 to your skill for being at the range, you can see how someone can quickly think they've got adequate skills.

But let's assume our shooter is an avid study and has put 2 points into it to get a Guns/TL8 (Pistol)-11.

At the, ever popular, 7-yards there's a -3 range penalty.

With the Magnum, we're going to have an 8 to hit and if we fire the full three rounds we'd need to roll a 3 to hit with the second shot and there's no way the third is connecting.

With +P we start with the same 8 to hit, but our second and third shots will hit on a roll of 6 and 4 respectively.

We're within a whisker of having the same chance of hitting with three rounds of +P as two of Magnum.

Just to boil that down a tad.

8 or less is a 25.926% chance.
6 or less is a 9.259% chance.
4 or less is a 1.852% chance.
3 or less is a 0.463% chance.

The guy missing with all five shots firing over the counter at the convenience store makes more sense now, doesn't it?  That's at a whopping 1 yard.  No penalty to hit for range!

Now the magnum hits one round on a 11, two on a 6 and still can't land a third on a 1.  +P will hit the first shot on the same 11, second on a 9 and third on a 7.

11 or less is a 62.500% chance.
9 or less is a 37.500% chance.
7 or less is a 16.204% chance.
6 or less is a 9.259% chance.

Did I mention that three 6-sided dice average a roll of 10?  On average nobody hits at all at 7 yards!

But let's check damage anyways.

Assuming that hollow points change the damage to 2d+2(0.5) pi+ for Magnum and 2d(0.5) pi+ for +P...

Average damage for the Magnum against an assailant in a t-shirt is 12 per shot (4 to 19 spread).
Average damage for the +P is 9 per shot (1 to 16 spread).

Potentially, the +P can land more damage than the Magnum just because it's possible to get all three rounds to hit.  +P is also going to do more damage because it's far more likely to get a second shot to hit.

Of course, no self respecting adventurer is going to have such a low DX or skill...

Why Yes It's Convoluted

The .25 ACP model 1910 is derived from a 9x19mm design that wasn't working out.

Who knew?

Slightly Different Approaches

I made good my threat to get The Lovely Harvey an FDE PMAG for Kevina.

It even has Windows installed!

As you can see from the pics we agree about some features and disagree about others.  We even differ about the placement of the light!

I'm Sold

The Scent Of Clenzoil

Clenzoil reminds me of something...

I can't place where I've smelled something like it before.

I want to say it's something I've smelled around aviation museums, but I'm not sure.

Any of y'all aviation types recognize it?

Helpless

There comes a point in being the parent of an autistic-like retarded "child" where there is literally nothing you can do to make the situation better during a meltdown and you just have to wait and ride it out.

It could be ten minutes, it could be ten hours, before the "kid" is recovered and calmed down enough to start being in control of themselves again.

The triggers are numerous and mostly out of the parent's control.

Sometimes the only thing you can do is sequester them and do what you can to keep the damage to a minimum.

Sizes

The pretty one was made in, going by the serial number and making a couple of specious assumptions about production rates, 1925.

That makes it near contemporaneous with my Colt 1908 Pocket Hammerless in .380, made in 1926.

Time marches on, though...

The ugly one was made, using the same assumptions, in 1922.  But look at how similar in size a SIG-Sauer P238 is to it!

The size of the Mauser is a little inexplicable.  The fact that the design was tweaked slightly and successfully made into a .32 ACP version says something about it being a tad oversized.

The little FN debuted in 1905, so they did this deliberately.  Were they genuinely thinking that this would be a good service pistol?  Possibly, since a pistol is most often a badge of rank with lots of armies.

A Bit Better

The ugly one responded to oil and nylon brushes like you'd expect.

But the powdery red rust is now gone and the pits it left behind under the grips are soaked in oil.

That's in the win category.

It's also none the worse for wear being clean and oiled than it was sitting bone dry and corroding in a pawn shop.  Perhaps we should call this a last-minute pardon by The Willard?

Oh Noes!

An 8-year old "independent" Office of Congressional Ethics, voted in largely on partisan lines by the newly Democrat majority House of Representatives is being eliminated by the same body that created it, also, largely on partisan lines.

This might be a bad plan, but unlike 2008 this Congress has a mandate from the voters.

That mandate is almost literally, "erase Obama from history".

This is one of the oldest things in his era, so it's appropriate to start there.

Of note, it was kind of tedious locating the vote on the resolution (not even a law) that created this redundant ethics committee.

Did Google Nuke Russia?

The past week, ZERO hits from Russia on the blog.

The Ugly One

Actual red rust inside there!

Giving it a good soak in some Clenzoil and going to attack it with some brushes to see what I can get off without hurting anything.

Because it's a Mauser, damn near every piece is numbered with the serial.

One For Each Hand

One of the local pawn shops has had a .25 ACP 6.35x16mmSR Mauser model 1910/14 for as long as we've been making the rounds at them.

At least three years.

It was busted, so we kept passing it by.

After a while, a second one appeared for the same price.  It was not busted, but we kept on passing it up because it was a "mite" ugly.

Today Willard finally broke down, talked them down almost $150 on the two of them and bought them.

The one on the left is the busted one.  Well, was.

First, it wouldn't fire.  Second, it wouldn't go on safe.  Third, the slide didn't quite go back far enough to lock, so it wouldn't go quite far enough back to get the barrel out.

Holding the slide all the way back, I had Willard thwack a punch on the bar between the recoil spring and the barrel.  That got us the 0.5mm we needed to get the barrel removed.

With the slide forward and striker exposed, the problem became obvious.  The sear and the striker were too engaged.  Someone had not fitted the striker.

Since we had two, we did the curious monkey thing and swapped the striker assemblies between them.  Viola!  Now they both appear to release the striker correctly.  Go figure.

Once the striker works correctly, the slide locks to the rear and the barrel comes out like it should.  Two with one stone!

Now the safety.

Turns out, it's this flat-wire V-spring causing the problem:

Actually, it's not.  What's causing the problem was a gunsmith special ROUND wire spring that is entirely too stiff to work and because it's round it can slip off the trigger bar!

Swapping the flat-wire spring from the uglier gun to the prettier one cures the safety problem, but unlike the striker swap, leaves one gun without a function.  Numrich claims to have the spring and the picture shows flat wire.

Now, about the gun some.

Here's a field strip.

To take one apart...

Lock the slide to the rear.  Just pull back the slide with no magazine in the gun.
Push down on the little spring holding the barrel retainer.

Now, rotate the barrel retainer 90˚ in either direction, doesn't matter which.

This will let you pull the barrel retainer out the front of the pistol...

...and lift the barrel straight up and off the frame.

Now the fun begins.

Insert an EMPTY magazine into the pistol.  This will release the slide.  Now pull the trigger to let the striker loose so it doesn't hold the slide.  Then, remove the magazine.  The slide can now be removed out the front.

Then you can remove the springs and their guides simply by pulling on them.

Reassembly is almost the reverse, except you don't need the magazine.  Replace the slide, pull to the rear until it locks, then it's the opposite of take-down.

This gun is strange in so many ways.  The safety is two controls.  That little lever that looks like it could be a slide lock is the safety.  Push it down for safe.  The round button under it that looks like it could be the magazine release is the safety release!  The safety will also lock the slide closed, so don't have it engaged when you insert a magazine.

Inserting a magazine is the only way to release the slide.  In one way, it's handy that it speeds reloads.  In another it's a pain for disassembly.

The magazine is released by an everyday heel catch.

Rapid Fire

When the range officer comes up to your lane and informs you that the range has a "no rapid fire" policy where none existed before...

It could be because you weren't hitting the target at all at 7 yards.

Just sayin'...