Brass, Barrels, and Bureaucracy #3

I was fortunate to have the entire week of the 4th off. I spent some time with the family and got a little work done on the website. True to form I took both kids out fishing, each on separate days. Since I did not want to break a good losing streak, we did not catch anything. When I say “we” it’s my kids and I. My wife caught a small bluegill, on the second cast, and she hates fishing.

Needless to say, the kids have been a little disheartened by the lack of success, so I have been working on another way to spend Saturdays. At some point, we will end up at shooting range, just as soon as I can find one that I like.  Until then, or rather in addition to, I have been looking at getting the kids involved in RC Airplanes. The kind folks over at Flite Test have done a remarkable job of making things very accessible, and the hobby has changed so much since I was a teen.

My brother was kind enough to find some foamy airplanes salvage from an estate cleanout, and I had a box of foam board left over from a drone project that ended up dying on the vine. Each of the kids and I have built some new foam board fliers, and I am slowly working on getting the rest of the things together to make them flyable.

Website Updates

I have been working on an article about dry tumbling for some time now. I finally got it to a point where I felt good about publishing. With the popularity of wet tumbling, I think most newbies never stop to consider using a dry tumbler and there are some benefits to the dry tumbling method. I outline everything in the write up below.

Brass Cleaning 101: Dry Tumbling, Where We Go Wrong

Time at the Bench

Would you load it?

Ever reach into a bag of brass and the first one you pull out looks uglier than sin? I was fishing through the brass for an example photo when I stumbled across this beauty. First piece of brass I pick out of the bag…

When I find a defect, I generally assume that I am not lucky/unlucky enough to pick the one defective piece from the lot of how many tens, hundreds, or thousands may be part of that lot. To me it always screams, there is probably more where that came from. The bag of brass I pull this from was all range pickups. I probably have more Perfecta brass mixed into that bag. While placement of the flash hole isn’t ideal, I’ll still probably load and shoot it in a “plinking” load.

I use the original FW Arms Decapping Die (Now owned by Dillon Precision), and it’s about as bullet proof a die as you can asked for, I highly recommend it, especially if you deal with a lot of military brass that sometimes have crimping in pockets or the odd Berdan primed shell mixed in. So I am not concerned about breaking a decapping pin.

Tumbler Woes

My Cabela’s 400 tumbler, which I have had for about 15 years finally gave up the ghost. While that one bearing was not in great shape, it was not the root cause. The motor windings are likely shorting out. It’s a shaded pole motor, the kind of motor you usually find in bathroom ceiling fans, there’s no brushes or start capacitor to replace. There is a silver lining to the whole thing.

I reached out to Berry Mfg. who made these tumblers for Cabela’s (and a few others) and asked if I could purchase a new motor, and a new lid for the tumbler (my lid is being held together by shipping tape). They do not sell the motors, but they will refurbish the unit for $35 which includes replacing the motor, lid and bowl, as well as return shipping. Sounds like a pretty good deal.

The downside is they are in St. George, Utah. I kind of wish the tumbler crapped out about four years ago, when I was living in Cedar City, Utah. It would be a nice road trip. Now I am seriously debating if the shipping to get it out there, combined with the $35 service, is worth the cost and hassle. The cost of a new Berry’s 400 is about $70. Shipping rates have gotten outrageous lately. I haven’t made up my mind as to what I’ll do, so for the time being I am down a tumbler.

Even so, Berry’s customer support deserves a shout-out for continuing to service older units; especially one that was purchased under the Cabela’s label.

Industry and Legislative News

Hearing Protection Act (HPA) & Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles and Tools (SHORT) Act

If you have been following the news, then you should already know that President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful, Bill” passed and was signed into law on July 4^th.  Included in the Bill was both the HPA and the SHORT Acts which reduced the tax to $0. To be honest, I was expecting some 11^th hour challenge to strip the HPA and SHORT acts completely from the bill, but that never materialized.

With the laws signed, everyone’s question is naturally what’s next? Fortunately, we did not have to wait long, in fact we knew what was going to happen several hours before the bill was signed into law. Nearly a dozen Pro 2A groups announced they would be filing lawsuits challenging the Constitutionality of the NFA registration requirements now the tax is $0.  I am working on a write up that I plan to publish this week detailing what the next four years are likely to look like. It’s too much to try and cover here.  

In short, if there’s going to be something done through the courts, there has never been a better time to do it. We have the Supreme Court’s rulings that have set legal precedents regarding firearm rights, we have a President who is likely going to direct the DOJ to have muted defense or symbolic defense. We also have several conservative district courts and a conservative leaning Supreme Court. With that said it’s not going to be a quick process, and we may not have an official outcome until closer to the end of President Trumps term in 2029.

In the meantime, we should be looking to the ATF to propose changes to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) on how the affected NFA items are to be transferred. They have the power to change the rules and eliminate the need for fingerprints, a redundant background check, and requirements to report movement of items across State lines.  If this happens, it will likely be a leading indication of how the DOJ as a whole is going to move forward with the change in the law.

As to when the requirement for the $200 tax will be lifted, the soonest we could expect to see it may be October 1^st, or roughly 90 days after the bill was signed into law. However, I have seen some reports that this requirement may persist until January 1^st 2026.

The last thing I will say about this is some of the responses we have been seeing among the influencers. There are a lot of people who are rightly celebrating this as a win. This is a huge win, and it is something that the 2A community has been working towards for 20+ years. We did not get everything we wanted, but we got enough to make a legal challenge on the rest.

There are some in the community that have a “All or Nothing” mentality. That sort of attitude really creates a log jam in the legislative process. We can say we would like more, and that we are disappointed that we couldn’t completely repeal the NFA, but I think it threatens to primary Senators and Representatives who were able to by and large deliver a win, even if it was not the “total victory” we were hoping for, is not seeing the forest for the trees. We got a win here, the ball is closer to the end zone, we can work with this.

New Guns and Gear

Athlon Optics Rangecraft

In the world of chronographs, a lot has changed in the last 15 years. First it was the Lab Radar which made Doppler radar-based velocity measurements accessible to the shooter. (I love mine). Lab Radar was the King of the Hill for a while until a surprising competitor came kind of out from the left field, Garmin, a company known more for GPS base navigation aids. Their 2023 release, the Xero, really upended the market for radar-based chronographs and guys who did not like the bulk of the Lab Radar gravitated immediately to the Garmin Xero.

Now we are starting to have some real market competition. In 2024 Lab Radar introduced the LX model, and Cadwell introduced the VelociRadar. Now in 2025 we have the Athlon Rangecraft. The thing that makes Rangecraft appealing is the sub $400 price tag. Looks to be very comparable in features to the Lab Radar LX, and possibly a complete rip off the Garmin. (Seriously, I haven’t seen this big of a copy since seeing Ruger’s LCP next to a Kel-Tec P3AT)

As a side note, the LabRadar LX is listed as discontinued and or unavailable by many leading online retailers (Brownell’s, Optic Planet, Midway USA). It is still listed by Inifintion on mylabradar.com, however its unavailable on all of their dealer websites. The 1st gen unit, that I like because it gives the down range velocities, also has either been discontinued or is being phased out.

Regardless, we live in a time where excellent chronographs are not only available but really becoming affordable. Given these all sitting behind and to the side of the muzzle, you no longer even have to cross your fingers and hope you don’t send a shot low.  A good chronograph on the line will teach you more about how your handloads are doing than nearly any other tool you can to buy.

That’s all we have for this week.

Jay & Marc

The Ballistic Assistant is a website dedicated to the art of handloading and shooting. We aim to share tips on reloading and shooting, inform others on what’s going on in the firearms community, and provide our opinion and thoughts on firearm related news and events. If you like what you read, we only ask that you subscribe and share with a friend or two.

If you have questions, comments, or ideas, we’d love to hear from you.

Jay – jay@theballisticassistant.com

Marc – Marc@theballisticassistant.com