Author: hsoi

Use of profanity in issuing commands

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

BACK UP, MOTHERFUCKER!

or

BACK THE FUCK UP!

or

BACK UP!

or

Hey can you back up?

Is there a difference? Yes there is.

This past weekend I was assisting with classes at KR Training. One of the skills taught in Defensive Pistol 1 is issuing verbal commands. For instance, “STOP! DON’T MOVE!”. And yes, you must find your inner drill sergeant when you issue that command. The use of verbal commands is an attempt to control the situation as an alternative to and avoiding the use of deadly force. The issuance of commands isn’t black and white, there is a continuum.

You want to start out with the least amount of assertion, while still giving a firm command. “Hey, can you back up?” is an example. You’re telling the (potential) VCA what you want them to do, but you’re being reasonably polite about it. If they comply, great. The situation remains calm and they are doing what you want. If however they do not comply and the situation warrants, you may need to step up your command to gain compliance, perhaps yelling “BACK UP!”. Now you’re not asking, you’re telling, and with a louder, more commanding tone. One additional benefit of escalation is that of witnesses. Compare how it looks to uninvolved bystanders (potential witnesses) if you went from 0 to 100, especially if 100 didn’t balance out with the way the VCA was acting at the time, vs. if you went from 0 to 25 to 50 to 75 to 100, especially if the VCA’s actions were continued and non-compliant?

But this is where we get to the topic of profanity. It always happens in the DPS1 class, that someone will yell their flavor of command with a “fuck” or “fucker” or “motherfucker”. While we suggest something like “stop, don’t move”, in the end you need to find a command set that works best for you (and it may be more than one). So yes, people get creative as they work to figure it out the first time. In this particular class I was working the small range but came over to the main range to fetch a student. The class had just learned about verbal commands and students were back at the fumble tables reloading magazines, discussing, and joking about the use of profanity. I spoke about this with them, and figured it’d make something worth writing about. Hence. 🙂

The choice to use profanity is up to you. The use of profanity certainly adds a stronger tone. Compare “Back up!” to “Back the fuck up!”, and the latter is certainly a stronger command. As well, consider that criminal element likely understands and utilizes profanity themselves, so consider this in your choice. I personally will avoid the use of profanity, unless it escalates to a point where that additional emphasis is required.

If you choose to use profanity, you must be careful in your choice.

What’s the difference between “back the fuck up” and “back up motherfucker”? The first is a strong command, the second is an insult. The first just said what to do. In the second, you called the VCA a “motherfucker”… and now, you have escalated the situation, you have pissed him off more. I hope you can see how this could be a dangerous and bad thing.

Some may shrug that off as that you can’t control what comes out of your mouth when the flag flies. I won’t deny that. However, we can work to practice our scripts beforehand. Find the command set that works for you (I do like using “back up” and variants, thank you SouthNarc). When you are working on your dry fire practice, issue verbal commands. Work to find your script. Rehearse your script.

We all love working those hard-skills that involve throwing lead downrange, because that’s fun. But well-rounded self-defense should strive to avoid slinging lead as much as possible. There are other skills vital to learn, issuing commands is one of them. To use profanity in those commands can be an integral part of the command continuum, but you must be aware of the nuances and work accordingly.

It allows a woman to retain her humanity and dignity

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

This past weekend at KR Training I was assisting with classes, one of which was Basic Pistol 2. There were numerous women enrolled in the class, one of which stood out to me.

This woman was tiny.

I’d say she was 5′ nothing, if that. Very petite size, maybe weighed 80-90 lbs, if that. I mean, she was small; nothing unhealthy, just the way God made her. Plus, she was an older woman, probably in her 50’s. She came to learn how to shoot, and she did fairly well in the class.

You know what? I’m glad she’s learning to shoot, and shoot defensively.

Why?

Consider me. I’m easily twice her size. I’m 6’3″, 210#. I’m somewhat young, strong, skilled in martial arts. For someone built like me, someone like her is no physical match. It wouldn’t even matter if she was a 100th degree black belt ultimate supreme grandmaster in every martial art out there…. I’d still be able to flick her aside.

What good is pepper spray or a whistle when physically overpowering her would take almost no effort on my part?I doubt she could swing a baseball bat at me in a way that would do much to stop me. Heck, I’m not even sure she could kick me in the balls hard enough to make me fall over.

But I do know she can press the trigger on a gun, and that would do a lot more towards making someone built like me fall over.

A gun is a force equalizer. She is put in a God-given position of disadvantage. Should she be satisfied and forever relegate herself to being in the “easy prey” and “victim” category? Or should she be happy that Samuel Colt gave her the ability to be equal?

I fail to understand why there are people in this world hungry to deny women like her the ability to retain their humanity and dignity. To those people I ask, if you succeed in banning guns, what is she supposed to do? Look her in the eye and tell her.

Sunday Metal – Sixx A.M.

/ hsoi

Nikki Sixx’s side project, Sixx A.M. has a new album. Here’s the first single and video, “Lies of the Beautiful People”

And you know… I don’t see why Sony Music would want to prohibit playback from wordpress.com. If you allow embedding, allow it. This is free press and promotion for y’all… unless of course, you want to ensure to drive traffic to YouTube itself, which is likely the case.

Mead – my second experience(s)

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I tried mead.

I liked mead.

I wanted to try more.

Wife said she was curious to try, so next time I went to the store the goal was an introduction for her and further exploration for me. With that in mind I bought one of the same, the Redstone Meadery’s Traditional Mountain Honey Wine. I also bought one of their Juniper varieties. Finally, something totally different, a Chaucer’s Mead.

I picked Chaucer’s merely because it was not-Redstone. But I thought the addition of a packet of mulling spices was a cool thing so hey, why not.

The first thing I wanted to try was the Chaucer’s. I open the bottle and smell. Certainly smelled like sweet wonderful honey. Then I tasted it. The taste was wonderful to me, yes, better than the Redstone (to my palate, anyways). What’s the difference? Well, Chaucer’s tasted and had a mouthfeel that was almost exactly like honey. The Redstone of course smells like honey, but the taste is different. It’s like the Redstone has a honey with a “bite” to it. The closest analogy I can think of is say how Barq’s root beer has “bite” compared to say Mug root bear. But that’s not even really a fair nor accurate comparison, but I know of no other way to convey this by just typing. Mouthfeel as well, with the Chaucer’s feeling “thicker”, more of that glycerin-like honey-ness. But certainly, Chaucer’s isn’t pure honey. I liken it to saying it’s like drinking honey that has some white wine in it. It’s really amazing how honey-like the Chaucer’s is, by comparison to the Redstone, and I thought that was pretty honey-like.

Of course, since I had a bottle of the Redstone Traditional, I cracked it open for some side-by-side comparison to get the above “analysis” down. The Redstone is OK, but my palate prefers Chaucer’s.

So with that, the Redstone Juniper… well, the Juniper added an interesting twist to it. I’m not sure if I liked it or not. Hard to say, because I think I was more mentally caught up on the “Redstone vs. Chaucer” difference. That which made Redstone Redstone stood out more to me and I think I focused more on that than the Juniper. Still, I finished the bottle so it must not have been horrible. 😉

As for the mulling spices. I tried it. I’m not sure I like it, but I’m not sure I gave it a fair shake. I heated up a cup of the Chaucer’s mead in the microwave, then let one of the bags steep for a few minutes. Mind you, their instructions are to use one “tea” bag for half the bottle and two for the whole bottle. So I may have overdone it. Or, maybe I don’t like hot mead. Next time I should heat it up and then try drinking “plain” mead warm. See how that fits me. As well, make it properly according to the directions. Finally, after letting the spices steep, chill the mulled mead back down to say in the 40º range and see how that tastes. Of course, trying other spice mixes could be something to consider as well. I mean, who knows how long this might have been sitting on the shelf and if those spices lost some oomph.

Wife’s take? She doesn’t like it. She thinks it’s neat, but since she doesn’t like eating raw honey, it’s not surprising she doesn’t like this. But she does think it’s cool and even went back to try some again. In fact, she joked that she needs to start eating more raw honey to see if she can acquire more of a taste for it. My take on that? She thinks it’s cool and is willing to continue trying it… so long as it’s closer to the Chaucer’s than the Redstone.

Anyways, this is fun. It’s wonderful to explore new things and expand your horizons.

Ladies Only Pistol Course

/ hsoi

A Ladies Only Pistol Course, taught by Lynn Givens of Rangemaster and Penny Riggs of KR Training will be offered at KR Training on Saturday May 21, 2011.

The course is designed to introduce ladies to the realities of self defense with handguns, and to give the student a firm foundation upon which future skill can be built. It looks like it should be a good course. I’ve trained with Lynn and her husband Tom, and they are top notch people and trainers. I do my best to not miss opportunities to train with them.

If you don’t know who Lynn Givens is, here’s some of her story:

Some years ago, before becoming Mrs. Givens, Lynn was stalked by a mentally disturbed man who threatened her life and the life of her young son. Eventually, that person committed suicide, ending that particular threat. However, as Lynn researched personal security issues in response to that threat, she learned about the actual level of criminal violence and the need to be self sufficient in terms of personal safety and security.  That led Lynn to a dedicated study of personal self defense, and she has since accumulated almost 1200 hours of formal training in firearms and other self defense topics.  Lynn has trained extensively with Rangemaster; John Farnam; Massad Ayoob; Rob Pincus; Michael DeBethencourt; Southnarc; and other well known instructors.  She holds Instructor Certifications from Rangemaster, the NRA, and the State of Tennessee, and is a Surefire Low Light Technology Specialist. She is the Primary Instructor among the group of female firearms instructors at Rangemaster.

My understanding is the class is half-full, and I expect it will sell out. The sooner you sign up, the better your chances of making the class!

(Full disclosure: I am an assistant instructor at KR Training… but regular blog readers ought to know that)

No TV for Lent

/ hsoi

I asked Kiddos what they were giving up for Lent. Wife said that it’s going to be a group thing.

They’re giving up TV.

I’m impressed. It’s been a couple of days now and I haven’t heard the TV on and you know, that’s kinda refreshing. A little TV now and again is fine, but the kids have gotten into a bit of a rut and if they’re bored turn to the TV.

I think it will be cool to see what they opt to do to pass time, even if it’s just having to deal with being bored. And more curious, how will they come out on the other side? Will they just revert back to old habits? Or will they discover something new, something else worth spending their time on?

This will be an interesting journey. 🙂

Hornady Powder Cop Die… for .223 Rem?

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

I’ve been too busy with other things to spend time at the reloading bench. But the other night I had a little time so I thought I’d switch the powder drop over from the pistol to the rifle rotor and get it adjusted. With that done, next station is the powder cop die.

Uh… the end of the die rod doesn’t fit into the mouth of a .223 Rem case.

Not good.

But the fix is simple!

Turn it over.

You can see in the above picture that on the left you have a small end, 0.1855″ in diameter. On the right, the larger end, .2485″ diameter. Chances are when you bought your powder cop die, it was installed with the large end down, inside the die, and the small end stuck up and out for you to measure your powder.

Remove the little white rubber ring on the rod. The rod should then fall free of the die body. Flip the rod over, putting the little rubber ring all the way up towards the larger end, then put the rod back into the die flipped around. That’s it! Simple.

I’m not sure if this is any sort of Hornady-blessed way to do things. When I ran into the problem last night I hit Google first to see if there was a whole other die to handle smaller calibers; no, Hornady only sells the one. So further searching turned up this “flip it over” solution. Again, not sure if it’s Hornady-blessed, but others report it works fine. I guess I’ll find out eventually.

300BLK in action

/ hsoi

Oh… this is… just… too… cool.

300BLK in action.

.300 BLK has a lot of potential. Coupled with a suppressor and wow, what a difference.

The thing to catch in the video is that the rounds alternate: subsonic, supersonic. Every shot fired you’ll hear a little bit of mechanical action: that’s the action, and the suppressor. Then after ever other shot you’ll hear a “crack” sound, which is the bullet going supersonic. So just take that for what it’s worth in terms of the effect a suppressor (and proper ammo) make.

Ooo… that could make a great hog hunting rig.

Open Carry bill introduced in 82nd Texas Legislature

/ hsoi / 15 Comments

Looks like Rep. George Lavender (R, District 1, “A” grade from the NRA)  has filed HB 2756 “related to the authority of a person who has a license to carry a handgun to openly carry the handgun.”

I’ve given the bill text a read and it looks like what’s been done is go through the Texas law books and cross out or repeal portions of the law pertained to concealed carry. For example: “who possesses a [concealed] handgun”. I’m not sure anything was added, I unfortunately don’t have the time right now to do a side-by-side comparison of the submitted bill vs. the present books.

I’d like to hear reader thoughts on this.

My initial reaction is this may not go far enough for many open carry advocates. Many of them have changed from advocating “open carry” to advocating “constitutional carry”, the difference being that 2A is all the “license” needed so no other regulations should be on the books. So what this really comes down to is a continuum and how far along it you wish to go.

As well, if I’m understanding the bill, you are still going to have to be licensed to carry, it just doesn’t matter if it’s open or concealed. That might make the CHL Instructors happy because suddenly a need for their classes won’t go away (like the income that goes with it). But could it create more hassle for citizens and law enforcement? Perhaps, because someone will freak out about a “man with a gun”, LEO has to check it out. Or perhaps LEO’s just start randomly checking.

I’ll be curious to hear what the NRA and TSRA have to say on this. My feeling is, from a political standpoint it’s good to start talking about this, it’s good to start crafting legislation and see how people stand on it, how business and special interest react. But it may be too big a leap yet for people to make. But as I said, on the continuum, it may be a small enough leap that people could accept (i.e. it won’t get all “wild wild west”, there’s still licensing to ensure only good people can do this). Who knows. We’ll see. Sometimes it’s better to chip away at the stone instead of dynamiting the entire quarry.