Tam has a look at the different ways to classify gun folk.
I guess I’d be a trainer (which of course makes me a shooter and owner too), who is looking to become a gamer, expects to be a hunter eventually.
Author: hsoi
Sunday ride
Early Sunday mornings are my favorite time for motorcycle riding. The roads are about as dead as you’ll see during the week, so there’s little pressure and little noise. It’s a great time to ride.
This morning the weather was great. Cool, breezy, fairly cloudy. Just had some rain so the roads are fairly clean. And with the rain we’ve been getting lately, everything is green. Wildflowers in bloom up and down the roadsides, lush green grass. It’s just a great time to cruise and enjoy what’s around you; be thankful for it too.
I prefer to ride alone as riding is my therapy, my escape, my time to decompress and unclutter my head. On Sunday mornings, it’s my personal time for commune with the greater thing(s) out there. When you roll through and experience the sights, the sounds, the smells of the world around you, you get reflective… you get thankful… you count your blessings and perhaps discover a few you didn’t realize you had. I haven’t been able to ride much latey and it reflects in the level of stress I’ve been feeling. While today’s ride was short, it was better than nothing and certainly welcome.
To boot, I stopped by Cabelas, picked up a couple things including .22 LR ammo (finally, someone has it back in stock!). I picked up 5 bricks — that’s over 2500 rounds, and I guess means I have an instant arsenal now, right? For anyone who wonders why someone would need that much ammo, well… come shooting with me sometime, you can use the Buck Mark, and you’ll see how quickly one runs through it. You might even have fun too, but don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. 🙂
Sunday Metal – Anthrax
I always liked “lighter” metal, but then one day in high school a friend of mine played a cassette tape for me that introduced me to the world of “true” metal.
Of course, the song wasn’t much of a metal song, it was “I’m The Man” (sorry, YouTube won’t let me embed it). But it was funny enough that I kept listening to it. Even tho the EP was mostly mixes and edits of that one song, it also contained a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, which was well done. Enough that it made me seek out other Anthrax albums like “Among the Living”.
Anthrax was a different sort of thrash band. They weren’t all spikes and leather, well they used to be but later saw them wearing t-shirts and Jams. Lyrical content came from other places, like Stephen King and Judge Dredd comics. And of course, they were one of the first to blend rap and metal:
Anthrax has had their lineup changes, their career ups and downs, but they always made their unique brand of metal.
Play date!
I actually dislike the term “play date”, but figure it’s amusing for a title.
TXGunGeek organized a play day. It was him, some of his friends, commenter Chimera was there, doc was there (it was a pleasure to meet you!), Barbie no-showed on us. But to me, the coolest part was TXGunGeek said it was cool if I brought my kids so Daughter came out with me.
Everyone got unpacked and there was just a smorgasbord of guns on the table. Everyone checking everyone else’s gear out, “Hey can I try that?” “Only if I can try that!”. It was quite cool. But, allow me to focus on My Little Girl for a bit, since that was the highlight of my day. 🙂
The main thing she was looking forward to was shooting the Buck Mark. A few days ago at house we did a little dry fire. She’s never fired a handgun before so we went over things like grip and stance, how the Buck Mark operates, etc.. She already knows about things like sight picture and trigger control, but we touched on those again as well. So once we got to the range and we could go hot, we shot steel. At the range there’s a nice set of steel targets, from 6″ and 8″ circles to larger rectangles and pepper poppers. Daughter had a blast. She liked shooting the Buck Mark. She liked the sound of lead hitting steel. She was doing really well. She would shoot a magazine then rest, since the gun would be heavy held out at arms length. As we went along I refined her trigger control so she would ride the trigger and properly reset it. Then working on regaining sight picture and shooting again as soon as she regained the sight picture. I think she really enjoyed that, being able to shoot a bit faster that she was before. I can’t disagree… there’s something satisfying about shooting fast and hearing all that “ping” on the steel.
Daughter also got to shoot a few other things. Chimera had a Henry lever-action .22, which Daughter really got a kick out of. I think she liked the lever-action. TXGunGeek had a .22 conversion kit for his AR and while the rifle was very heavy (you can see my right hand supporting the front), Daughter liked to shoot it.
Daughter was nothing but big smiles all morning long. She was shooting well, got to try some new (to her) and different guns. I’m a proud Daddy. 🙂
As for me, again I gotta say how much I like that Buck Mark. It is so much fun to shoot.
The big thing of the day was a course TXGunGeek set up. Started off with a long gun (whatever you wanted to shoot, Chimera even tried it with his Henry lever-action), engage cardboard, shoot some clay pigeons, more cardboard, move, transition to side-arm, steel, cardboard, move, more cardboard, various distances, precise shooting. A fun little course.
Here I am, engaging the clays and missing because I was figuring out exactly how much holdover I needed:
And here I am after the transition to the XD.
We wrapped up just as it started to rain on us. Good timing. The weather was very nice: partly cloudy, a cool breeze, moderate temps. Just a great day for shooting.
I asked Daughter what she enjoyed: the Buck Mark. 🙂 I asked her what she learned: how to shoot a handgun, and a bit more about things like sight picture and trigger control.
I asked myself what I learned: it reinforced my need to make an effort to back off on speed and jack up accuracy. Not so slow that it’s akin to bullseye shooting, but well…. after I got home I was thinking that next time I’m shooting the Buck Mark on the steel range the thing to have in my head is “all hits”, that all 10 rounds in the magazine must go “ping”. That will require slowing down a bit, being 100% sure of sight picture before firing, keeping my eyes glued to that front sight. I also learned I need to spend more time with my AR (and that I want an Aimpoint). What did I enjoy? Having a great time with my Daugther, bonding, teaching her things, creating fond memories. That was my highlight. 🙂
I want to thank TXGunGeek for setting this up and inviting me out to it, and for allowing my daughter to come along as well. Thanx to Chimera for letting us shoot his Henry (man, I want one of those now!). Doc, it was great to meet you! Everyone else, it was good to meet you too and I’m sure we’ll see each other again.
A good day. Now, off to clean some guns.
Updated: Gotta brag on my little girl a bit more. In the classroom at the range there’s a subtle but intentional thing done. I don’t want to say what it is because it’s better when students discover it on their own. It took me a few visits before I noticed it, then it was explained to me. This was daugther’s first time in the classroom and she noticed it immediately. I was tickled. 🙂
Updated 2: TXGunGeek has his write-up on the day.
Updated 3: Docbot finally wrote up!
Growing old together
Blogging’s been light the past couple days. My buddy W got married tonight. I was one of his groomsmen and was honored to be (thus my minimal blogging, as I’ve been off doing wedding stuff). He’s a great guy, someone I’m fortunate to be able to call a friend. He’s found himself a wonderful woman in A, and seeing the two of them together… they are great for each other. I know my word choice is pretty lame here, but the simple fact is I just can’t express it. Watching them exchanging their vows, heck, every time I’m just around them… you can feel something great between them.
I see how they treat each other. I see how they care for each other. The tenderness, the consideration, the way they light up. It’s not just little silly things either. It’s bigger things, things that matter more for a relationship to have long-term success. I do believe they’ve got “it”. I’ve only been married 13 years (1st and only marriage), so I still don’t know a lot. But I know what I like about my marriage and what helps to make it last:
My wife is someone I want to grow old with, and I’m someone she wants to grow old with.
If you have that, in so many ways you have an important bit of what it takes to succeed. I shared this, my wish for you both, at the reception this evening. It comes from my heart. I look forward to watching you guys growing old together. 🙂
The Three D’s
More self-defense acronyms: Detect, Defuse, Defend. From Tony Blauer, well, actually from Tony Torres.
What I like about this article is while the concepts of Detect, Defuse, Defend seem simple, Mr. Torres looks deeper into them and provides an improved explanation: one that involves being active and taking action, proactive not reactive. Another one of those mindset things.
Verbal commands
A nice article about verbal commands. (h/t to Robb Allen) I’ve touched on this before, and the article provides some good “checkpoints” for the sorts of commands to use.
One of the commands I’ve been taught was “STOP! DON’T MOVE!”. There’s a great deal of utility in this. Using those “checkpoints” it’s clear, causes hesitation, provides direction, and it can alert witnesses. It’s good for the situation… if you have to draw your gun and point it at someone, it’s a very appropriate command.
Another command I’ve heard to use is “POLICE! CALL THE POLICE!”. Let it be known I’m not recommending this because there’s potential risk for problem (e.g., impersonating an officer). But if the shit hit the fan and you’re in a self-defense situation, especially one where you’re in civilian clothing and have to draw a gun to shoot, it may be useful. It’s important to look at the phrase as a whole and in parts. It starts with “POLICE!”, which is where you risk getting into trouble but if you need to draw a gun and yell this you’ve probably got bigger problems to begin with. You can see why it can be useful to say this, but then maybe it won’t be because if you “identified” yourself as police, could you end up drawing fire? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe any other good guys on the scene would avoid you and/or support you, bad guys might avoid you too but also might turn on you. You just can’t know. But then you follow with “CALL THE POLICE!” which changes the totality of the delivered message, that there’s an emergency and someone that hears this needs to call the police now! I see a lot of advantages in this command, and disadvantages too. You just have to weigh it to know if it’s right. In terms of the checkpoints, ambiguity? sorta. hesitation? certainly. direction? no not really, tho “call the police” is a direction it’s a plea hoping for someone to call. alert witnesses? I think so.
One thing I’ll state about commands. Don’t cuss. STOP MOTHERFUCKER! DON’T YOU FUCKING MOVE OR I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU YOU PIECE OF SHIT!! No… that doesn’t go over very well. I mean, when the pressure is on it might fly out of your mouth and if it does it does. But if you can avoid it, avoid it. It keeps the message from being simple and direct. It also may look worse, should what you say/said become an issue.
And folks, don’t be afraid to practice your commands. If you’re doing dry fire for defensive purposes, throw your commands in. Just like all the things we practice, you figure it out beforehand and practice it enough so that when it comes time to use it, you just fall into it and do it.
Legibility
Who says revolvers don’t malfunction?
Revolver malfunction failure. Epic failure, perhaps. (h/t to SayUncle)
As said before, revolvers may have some mechanical advantages over semi-auto handguns, but they’re still mechanical devices and like anything mechanical they can and will fail (tho hopefully not all like this one did).
Creature Comforts
I recall hearing about this (I’m a fan of Aardman) but it slipped off my radar. Creature Comforts. A full episode online. Quite hilarious. The bull at about 4:50? I LOLd.
They did a great job with things. Some of the match-ups are hilarious.
Go watch. Laugh.
Updated: Watched it again, showing the wife and kids. The level of detail is great (e.g. the video game playing whatever he was… note the samuri sword on the back wall as a perfect touch for the scene). The juxtapositions are just so well done.
