I want to begin by saying I have engineered and fabricated some of the craziest crap known to man. Throughout the Real Guns site you’ll find plenty of examples; homemade recoil spring tester, my upside down bullet pull tension checker, my redwood door hinged pistol rest, and my 10 machine hours to make simple bullet ogive location identifier. I’ve used none of theseRube Goldberg machines beyond the then active project, but they are fun to make, and it’s fun to noodle through the concept. One thing I never attempt to do with these one purpose silly machines is sell them. Unfortunately, there are some other folks out there who don’t appear to share the same level of commercial restraint.
I had a lot of pistol rounds to fire at the range, so I thought I’d shop around for a rest that would help me steady the firearm at the tail end of tests when I checked for group sizes. I looked around on the Brownells‘ site, and ran across this picture and descriptive text below.“Lightweight, polyethylene rest is easy to carry and set up. Has a wide “footprint” for excellent stability. Use it as a rest for load testing, distance shooting, or boresighting and a vise for maintenance and cleaning. Padded barrel rest adjusts to fit any size handgun.”
I think most people would believe the firearm orientation, within the frame work of the picture above, when placed on the rest for shooting, would be muzzle toward the front with the barrel sitting on the elevated portion, and the grip heel facing down, supporting the gun at the rear of the rest. Those adjusting screws in the Bullshooter’s base would adjust elevation. In fact, it would seem pretty much like this picture (right) that appears without further description on the Bullshooter home page. With this thought, and a project ahead of me, I plunked down $65.65 in anticipation of receiving a steady rest. Unfortunately, what I received was not that, and so much less.
As an example, none of the pictures on the Brownells or Bullshooter web site seem to have a camera angle that shows this label that is glued inside the base, right under where the gun might sit. At least not on theBrownells‘ site, not on the Bullshooter home page, not within their product description page.You will find an illustration of a Bullshooter in use and oriented consistent with this label if you click on the small hyperlink at the end of the manufacturer’s product description page, “instruction page”. It is at this point you will discover the gun isn’t placed in the rest, it is placed outside of the rest, shooting toward the rest, where the geometry of the unit, height of the rest, position of adjustment, make little sense. It becomes not the Bullshooter sighting system, as labeled all over the unit and web site, or on the flyer packaged with the unit, but rather it becomes the Bullshooter: gun vise, maintenance rest, gun holder upper while you adjust your scope rest, and everything other than its projected purpose in life, a shooting rest.
This is the Bullshooter in its natural pistol rest for the range state. I used my Ruger Bisley for the example.With pads under grip, adjusters for the rest and the support all the way down, the grip must be raised off its support a good 2 1/2″ to get to level. Sort of defeats the purpose of a steady rest. The Manufacturer does include small foam rubber squares (see below) to place under the grip to help raise the grip’s elevation, but the minute the grip leaves the surface of the foam the shooter, not the rest, will be supporting the firearm.
For those of you who thought I was offering a worse case scenario with the long barrel Bisley, here is a look with a P239 SIG with a hair under 4″ barrel and a very real world firearm. Unless it’s loaded with bird shot, the utility of the rest eludes me – Look out, duck…no…up there, duck!
The instructions indicate the Bullshooter sighting in system is first used as a rest, see above, to place three closely controlled shots. Then the Bullshooter is turned around, the firearm is secured in the sturdy grip of the unit, and the unit is moved and adjusted about until the cross hairs are perfectly aligned on the bullseye. Then, very very carefully, without moving the scope or gun, the scope is adjusted until the cross hairs are right in the center of the three shot group. Check out the critical alignment in the picture above. So the Bullshooter is almost as useful as….a hand, or a sand bag, except not able to hold anything in a straight line.
What if the shooter isn’t packing a scope on that Glock or 1911? Hmm, let’s see. Here’s Kimber full size that misses the front support by a couple of inches, even when the rest is tilted toward the gun. And if it were used as a maintenance vise, what would you do with it? Handguns don’t have bolts to remove to scrub bores from the receiver end, and the rest’s clamping action is so lame it couldn’t hold a gun while a site is being drifted, or even a slide removed. Besides, don’t you have to pull grips to strip an auto or revolver ? So what could the purpose of the Bullshooter’s design? Oh, I know – to separate a shooter looking for a shooting rest from $65.
At a time when firearm industry prices are rising faster than healthcare, and federal and state budgets, including the one that is making California go broke, is it really necessary to put this kind of product out there and represent it as something it is not?As a pistol rest, the Bullshooter is junk and could be replaced with a sandbag. As a vise, it is weak and unstable, and could hold a firearm for no useful purpose. As a tool for setting sights, you’ve got to be kidding. I think they have the spelling wrong, it should be Bullsh**ter and Brownells should be ashamed to sell the product.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I expect too much, maybe I can’t read. Here is the product literature, you tell me what you think you would be buying and how it would work.
Thanks,
Joe
Joe
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