Guns

Why would you deny a woman her right to choose?

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

An editorial in yesterday’s Austin American-Statesman about the “guns on campus” debate.

We are not supporters of the state’s 1995 law allowing qualified adults to get licenses to carry concealed handguns. But, as is often the case with hot-button issues, the extremes predicted by both sides during that debate have not materialized.

We have not, as opponents opined, reverted to some kind of Wild West existence with shootouts at high noon and other times of the day. Somehow, we have remained a fairly civilized society.

And we have not, as proponents predicted, seen a raft of incidents in which pistol-packing Texans stepped to the fore to protect themselves and others through their deft use of concealed firepower.

First, I’d say you haven’t been looking that deep as there certainly are reported incidents of both. But you are more likely to hear stories of shootings than of non-shootings? Why? Because crimes are reported, but non-crimes are not. I know of a person that pulled his car over to deal with a phone call. A man came out of the woods, heading towards the car with the wrong look in his eye. Driver noticed and bailed out of the car meeting the man with his drawn gun. The man thought better and left. No crime reported, no story to hear about. This sort of thing happens more often than you think. So it’s difficult to quantify such things because of what we are able to and not able to collect data on.

Nevertheless, we do remain a fairly civilized society. But “fairly” isn’t 100%. Bad things can and do happen, and responsible people who care about themselves and their loved ones take steps to be prepared to minimize the impact of bad things happening.

Despite what some advocates say, Patterson reminds us that “this is really not about the kid carrying a gun to class so he can defend himself against a mass Virginia Tech murder,” he said, referring to the 2007 incident in which 32 people were killed by a gunman at that Blacksburg, Va., state university.

“It’s about the nursing student that goes to class at weird hours at UTMB in Galveston and has to walk back to a parking lot in darkness, or the lady with a protective order against a former lover or spouse,” Patterson said.

We’d like to think that even people in those situations could find ways to feel safe without packing a pistol. Perhaps we are naive.

It’s easy to be tough from behind a keyboard, oh editorial writer.

How about you tell that tiny woman I recently encountered in class… tell her what she should do to not just feel safe, but do something proactive about her safety.

Tell my female friend that’s a teacher at a Texas college and thus has to walk alone to her car, to the classroom. She can’t have a 24/7 bodyguard. She can’t have escorts. And if you are so willing to tell a woman she’s not allowed to take care of herself, are you willing to take a huge step back in women’s rights?

I’d think the AAS would be all for women’s rights… rights to choose… it’s her body, she can do what she wants with it. So, why are you so willing, so steadfast, in denying women their rights?

Yes, I think perhaps you are naive.

Palm38 Tri-Plex ammo

/ hsoi

I like snub revolvers. One challenge is finding the right/best ammo to carry in a snub. I have documented my snub trials, if you want to read them. So when I read over at The Firearm Blog about the Palm38 Tri-Plex Multi-Projectile .38 Special Cartridge, I was intrigued.

I read the specifications PDF. It looks… interesting. I’d like to see how it actually fares in something other than gel, and it’d also be nice to see it performing 1. in a lot more tests, 2. out of its intended firearm. From what I can tell, this ammo would NOT be good for use in the general sense (looks like it’s not very useful past 10-15 feet). But you see, this ammo is made by the people behind The Palm Pistol. So within that intended niche, the ammo appears to have promise. The Palm Pistol is designed for people who may have dexterity issues or arthritis and the like. In cases like those, the less recoil the better. But of course, if you reduce the kick going backward you also reduce the kick going forward. Furthermore, the Palm Pistol is single-shot, so anything you can do to make your one shot do as much work as possible, that’d be good. The Palm Pistol isn’t meant for distance, and aiming is either by point shooting or at best a laser, so distance isn’t too much of a factor. Within those parameters, this ammo could be a good thing.

It’ll be interesting to follow their developments.

Like free stuff?

/ hsoi

I just saw this posted to TacticalGunReview.com

We will be holding monthly drawings for cool schwag for reviewers.

For every review submitted, you get your name added to the hat.

The more reviews, the better your chance of winning

We will have COOL stuff to give away, no crap you don’t want.

At the end of the year we will put the monthly winners in a drawing for something VERY cool, like a gun or nice scope!

Spread the word

Guess I’m going to need to post more reviews… there, not here. 🙂

The dream of one-shot stop

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I don’t want to say it’s a myth, because it can happen. So instead, I’ll call it a dream because sometimes dreams do come true.

The “one shot stop”.

A few days ago something happened that caused me to think about this topic again. Oldest shot a 255# boar. A big, tough S.O.B.. It was a perfect shot through the vitals, 165 grains of .308 Win Barnes TSX dead-on through the heart. About 2500 fps, about 2300 ft-lbs of energy. Massive damage, and right through the pump station. Yet, the hog still ran a good 25 yards.

So why is it that people believe one shot from a .45 ACP is going to drop someone in their tracks? I’m not saying it’s not possible, but it’s not something you should count on. Remember, all pistol rounds suck. Caliber only matters inasmuch as it affects your ability to get good penetration and shot placement. As long as your round can get down where it needs to be, and you can put it there on-demand, that’s what matters. But don’t think that one shot is all it’s going to take. If you’re in a self-defense situation, your goal is to stop the attack. Techniques where you shoot once, or “double-tap” and assess, they can lull you into a routine that may set you up for trouble. That hog was shot through the heart yet he still “kept fighting” long enough to potentially do some damage if we weren’t 60+ yards away from him.

One-shot stops can happen, but instead of wishing for your dream to come true, it’s better to keep working to make the reality happen. Keep fighting until the fight is over… because your opponent probably will do the same.

Sniper Hog Lights – The Destroyer, a review

/ hsoi

Some long time ago I purchased The Destroyer, from Sniper Hog Lights. It was so long ago I forgot exactly why I settled on this light vs. the competition. But I finally got to use it on the hog hunt this past weekend.

I can say, it works as advertised. I’m very happy with it.

I purchased the light in red. They advertise 150+ yards visibility. I can vouch for that, and if you have a high quality scope with good “light gathering” ability, you’ll see even further. IMHO, that’s more than adequate for hunting hogs at night. I will caveat that I was using the light on the night’s of the “super moon” so there was a lot of ambient moonlight on a clear night. Still, I could see the red beam out to distance just fine. I would like to try it say on a new moon evening. I’ve tried it numerous times in my backyard and it lights up fine, but I don’t have a good empty country (i.e. no city light pollution) field to try it out in as much darkness as possible. Nevertheless, I’m satisfied with the throw. The throw is good, and I think the beam “shape” is good to provide a good focused beam but also enough spread for you to see what you need to be able to see.

I like that they provide numerous mount options. Generally I’m using the option to go on a rail, but it’s nice to have the “clamp” mount in my closet in case I wanted to use it on something like a shotgun or maybe my Savage bolt action rifle. I will say tho, there is some weight to the light so if you did clamp it onto the barrel, you best re-check your zero because even a tiny bit of weight out there could bend your barrel just enough to change your point of impact vs. point of aim. While a different specific issue, The Box O’Truth #51 talks about the effects of a rifle rest on your POI vs. POA; essentially the same issue, about affecting your barrel.

If there’s anything I don’t like, it’s the rechargeable batteries. They’re nice and all, but I just hate having to manage rechargeable batteries. Some can do X, some can’t. Some can be charged over and over no matter how much they’ve been used, some need to be drained all the way. It’s just a bother to me to try to keep everything straight. To their credit, theirs are fairly straightforward and simple; it’s just a personal thing. However, if you want to you can use CR123A’s, which is cool. I’m not sure how that affects the output nor the runtime, but to at least have it as an option is welcome, especially if you get caught out somewhere with dead rechargeables.

Another possible source of complaint. I got the tailcap switch with the button that would click on and click off. The click is loud. It’s very tactile with a lot of positive feedback, which I like. Plus you can half-depress it to momentarily enable/disable the light. But it’s still loud. That said, checking their website now it seems they have come up with a whole new switch which looks like it solves a lot of the problems. I obviously haven’t tried the new switch, but on paper it seems like a good version 2.0 improvement.

All things said, I like the light. Any nits are my own personal tastes or something they appear to have remedied. While the hog we whacked wasn’t taken at night with the light, we used the light frequently on the two evenings we were out and it served us well to scout and keep tabs on everything.

My son’s first hog

/ hsoi / 11 Comments

Oldest just passed a milestone — he bagged his first hog; in fact, he bagged his first anything. And it’s a doozy.

The Big Weekend

I’ve been trying, struggling to have a weekend hunt with my long-time friend Charles, of Tactical Gun Review. Something always comes up, usually on my part, and we can’t get together. Charles has a deer lease in the South Central Texas area, but what makes it a great lease is not just the property but that he has year-round access to it. Outside of deer season you can go fishing, dove hunting, turkey hunting, and yes… hog hunting. A few months back we set this weekend on our calendars as a “must do” and it happened. It wasn’t going to be just us tho, we brought our older sons with us as well, who have known each other for just as many years as Charles and I have known each other.

The goal for the weekend? Have fun. If we could bag a hog? even better. And while I would have loved to have bagged a hog myself, what I really wanted was for Oldest to bag one. He’s been out in the field with me before, sometimes a bust, sometimes we got something, but it was always me that did the work, he was just a spectator. This time, he was going to do the work. 🙂

Friday after work I packed my car with food, some clothing and essentials, a few rifles, and away we went. On the rifle front, I originally wanted him to use the 6.8 SPC. The whole reason I bought the 6.8 was for kids to use it because it doesn’t recoil that hard, shorter and thus easier to manage, plus some time ago I bought a powerful red LED flashlight to mount on the rifle precisely for hog hunting. But I changed my mind. Instead, I had him shoot the Savage bolt-action in .308 Win. My reasoning? It was a simpler manual of arms to operate (no gun, light, etc.), and that .308 would provide a much wider margin of error. Being as this would be his first time, he’d get excited, heart pounding, might rush things… never know. I figured the .308 would work out better for him. Prior to the hunt I had him work the rifle dry at home: get a feel for the trigger, learn how to work the bolt. He learned how to work the gun, but he had never live fired it. In fact, he’s never shot something as big as a .308; he’s had aversions to shooting rifles larger than a .22 LR because he doesn’t like the noise, but acknowledges that if he wants to bag something he has to. So, this was into the fire feet first. 🙂

First Night

We arrived Friday evening but with more than enough daylight to get us into the blind and wait. We parked our cars, pulled out the rifles, climbed into “The Beast” (an old Toyota 4×4 Charles keeps at the property for getting around) and headed for a stock tank on one side of the property where hogs had been seen. Unfortunately the pop-up blind blew into the tank, so we just plopped down on stools under a tree and obscured by tall grass. We waited. Night fell, but with that “super-moon” out you could see a lot going on, it was so bright.

We never saw any hogs. Some deer, an owl, lots of other critters. But alas, no hogs. We piled back into The Beast and checked out some other tanks, parking The Beast well away from the area and stalking up on it. It was obvious there was activity, just not when we were around. Ah well. We eventually headed back to the cabin for dinner and hanging out around the campfire drinking beer (boys – root beer, dad’s Dogfish Head brown ale) until the wee hours.

Saturday Morning

After a few hours of sleep we headed back out. Charles put Oldest and I at one of the stock tanks we visited Friday night, while he and his son headed to another area. The sun came up. A turkey was calling and showing and we watched him for a while. Then across the stock tank, probably 100 yards or so away, 2 does. No, 3 does… 4… 5… 6. It was nice to watch all those does grazing, but darn that the season is well-over. 🙂  After maybe 15 minutes or so we noticed the does spooked and took off. Seconds later we see why.

Hogs.

We were atop a high bank on one side of the tank. The opposite bank was probably 60 yards away, then up that bank 35 yards or so starts a tree line. Deep within those trees we saw all these little black masses running across the way. Yes yes yes! Hogs! But they were way back in the trees running in a manner that took them directly away from us with no chance of a shot. Oh man!

“Son, get your gun! get your gun! get it up! get ready!”

I of course went for my gun too, but I put it down. This was for him. Yes I’d love to get one myself, but this was for him. I was going to be the eyes, the coach.

Come on piggy… come on… please don’t run off…. yes!

We see the pigs turn and one by one start to run into the area. It’s a stock tank. Water. Plus there was a corn feeder at the far end. Food. A perfect ambush spot: at food and water. A swarm of piglets runs out. I don’t know… 30, 40, 50 of them? A lot. They all headed right for the feeder. Adults follow out of the trees but head down to the water.

YES!

One goes to drink but is head-on facing us. “No son, can’t” Come on… turn… turn…

More big hogs come down to drink.

“SONSONSONSON! There!  That one!”

A big one. Drinking. Perfectly broadside. And… holding still. You see, hogs almost never stop, they are almost always in motion so windows of opportunity for a shot can be hard to come by. But drinking? He stopped, he was still. Perfect opportunity.

“You got him?”

“Got him.”

“OK, let it rip!”

And the rifle roared.

He got him.

The hog ran for maybe 25 yards, did a circle and dropped.

High fives all around.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Oldest so excited. 🙂  He was wired. Electrified!

Once we confirmed he was down, and of course all the other hogs scattered from the sound of the gunshot, we left the blind and headed over to see him.

I thought he was maybe 150 lbs? But I’m terrible at such estimates. We snapped copious amounts of pictures. We sent text messages to Wife (and kiddos back home), to Oldest’s grandfather and uncle (Wife’s family, life-long hunters). Much happiness.

While waiting for Charles to come get us, another hog came through the trees! I snapped up my rifle and knelt down, got a bead on him and was prepared to take the shot, but a clear shot never presented itself. Either the hog wasn’t positioned well or there were trees/brush in the way. Eventually the hog got close enough, noticed us, and took off running. A second hog would have been nice, but no matter.

Heaving this big boy into the truck was a chore, even with a winch. But we got him back to the cabin, hoisted him up and weighed him.

Just over 250 lbs..

That’s big.

We gutted him (I got more practice at cleaning an animal) and while looking at the organs I saw the heart. The bullet had fully penetrated the heart. Right through the shoulder — and the massively thick “shield” (and his was a formidable one), right through the heart, and complete passthrough. Based upon how the entry and exit wounds looked, it looks like that Barnes Bullet functioned as advertised. This is why I love Barnes Bullets. For the record, it was a Federal Premium P308H Vital Shok (165 grain Barnes TSX). I figure he was shot at about 60 yards, so he got hit with that 165 grain bullet going about 2500 fps and probably hit with 2300 ft/lbs or so of energy, with that Barnes Bullet expanding and dumping almost all of that energy inside the body.

The Rest of the weekend

After we dressed the hog, we put him in a walk-in cooler because we were tired and not in the mood to clean him fully. Went fishing, and Oldest caught a nice bass. Best I did was get some nibbles and got one on but he jumped and threw the hook. Charles landed a nice one, and his son did too. But fishing didn’t last long as it was getting hot and we were all tired and hungry. Back to the cabin, eat, nap.

Upon rising, Charles and I went back to the task of cleaning the hog. That was a chore. Son, next time you need to shoot a small hog. 🙂 I’ve never shot a hog this size or dealt with one this size this close up. It was constantly amazing to me how thick his shield was. The entire side of this hog was just armor, thick, and very heavy. You need a solid and strong bullet, all hail the mighty Barnes. We spoke with the ranch manager and he contacted a local guy to see what we could do with the head. We’re going to see about having a European mount done. We don’t need to make a trophy out of everything, but this is not just his first but yes it is a big one. Might as well have something more than just memories. 🙂

We went back out that evening but we didn’t see anything. Charles and his son did have an opportunity, but the hog ran off and they were unable to connect on the running shot (it’s not easy). Oh and Charles’ son had a bummer earlier. While we were cleaning the hog, Charles’ son was still out in the field. Hogs came by, he stalked up, knelt and took aim and… click. The round didn’t go off. Bad primer? hard primer? who knows, but no bang. He was quick enough to work the bolt and chamber a new round, but alas by then the hogs were off. Bummer that he didn’t get the shot off, but he did everything right from staying in the field to stalking to remedying the malfunction. I say that’s well-worthy of praise!

Had to get home early on Sunday so we left before sunrise, leaving Charles and his son sleeping in the cabin. Bummer we had to go so soon, but we were both tired and drained and ready for a shower. 😉  Charles has the bigger cooler and will drop the meat off on his way home. I’ll take it to the butcher in a few days and we’ll have lots of sausage in the freezer.

My take

I’m so happy.

Oh sure, if I bagged one that’d be nice… but this was so much better. It’s great to see my Son so excited, so ready, so happy. But also, so disciplined. He took instruction from me so well, from studying anatomy charts, to listening to me talking about visualizing success, imagining the hog there, calming yourself, finding the target (“Aim small, miss small, right Dad?”), don’t take too long but also don’t rush it, smooth trigger press. He did everything right, and it paid off.

What all did he take from this? I don’t know. He doesn’t really know either, other than the immediate payoff of the joy of the accomplishment along with lots of meat. As his uncle congratulated him, “You put dinner, lunch, and breakfast on the table!”. I’m thinking more about the long-term. Will there be something in his life that will be able to be traced back to this weekend, to that moment? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Meantime, I have guns to clean. It’s all sandy out there and there’s grit and sand in everything. You work the bolt on that rifle and it just grinds and makes me cringe. I can’t expand/collapse the stock on my 6.8 without it sounding like sandpaper. I think that was the only bummer of the weekend was all the sand and dust everywhere.

I must give big thanx to Charles. His support and generosity made this all possible. Thank you, my friend. Y’all go visit and support his site, Tactical Gun Review.

Son, you did good. I’m proud of you.

Legislative progress

/ hsoi

Sorry. Overwhelmed. But some good news from the Texas Legislative session regarding the gun bills.

SB 321 (parking lot) passed the Senate floor. Nice.

HB 681 (parking lot) is out of committee. Apparently there were some changes, so we’ll see how it fares on the floor and reconciliation. But so far, so good.

CHL on campus (HB 750) was heard in the House committee and passed out. Looks like HB 86, HB 1167, HB 1356, HB 2178, all variations on the theme, were left pending in committee.

Looks like SB 354, Senate version, is going to be heard in Committee on Tuesday March 22.

Range bill passed Senate committee. Good.

Looks like things are moving along nicely.

Support the TSRA. If you’re a gun owner in Texas, you owe a lot to the TSRA.

Why should we learn lifesaving skills, like CPR?

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

The local chapter of the American Red Cross has this babysitter boot camp. It’s a two-day course that teaches not just stuff about babysitting (and certifies you in that), but there are aspects of how to run a business. While that’s good, the “boot camp” adds CPR and First Aid certification. It was an opportunity that knocked, and I enrolled Oldest and Daugther in it.

Daughter wanted to be there. Oldest was made to go. I want Oldest to take the course because no only do I think it will help his gift in working with small children, but First Aid and CPR certified? To me, that’s worth it.

I think about the notion of CPR and the notion of First Aid. Why do we encourage people to learn these skills? Here’s what Citizen CPR of Tulsa, OK says on their website:

Why Learn CPR?

Cardiovascular disease is very common — it’s the #1 killer in US and in Oklahoma.
Heart attacks can happen suddenly, especially if you and your family have one or more risk factors (family history, overweight, poor diet, smoking, etc).

Most medical emergencies occur in a person’s home or other place of recreation.
You can’t count on medical personnel to be nearby when you have an emergency, because chances are greater for sudden cardiac arrest to occur at home. If your family and friends don’t know CPR, life can be lost in mere minutes while waiting for help to arrive.

The reasons for learning CPR and first aid are simple: because when a situation that requires those skills happens, the fastest person to respond is the person right there when it happens. In a case like CPR of course it has to be someone else. For first aid, the situation may be something you can perform on yourself and certainly no one can be closer to you than you nor respond faster to you than you.

So we seem to grant and acknowledge that life-saving skills are important to know. That the more people we have on our streets with those skills, the better it is for society in general. Just ask Howard Snitzer.

With that in mind, let’s do a little word substitution. Same sort of importance about life-saving skills, just a different skill:

Violent crime can happen suddenly.

You can’t count on law enforcement personnel to be nearby when you have an emergency, because chances are greater for sudden violent crime to occur anywhere. If your family and friends don’t know how to defend themselves, life can be lost in mere minutes while waiting for help to arrive.

If we believe it’s important to know how to save lives, why are there people who say saving lives with CPR is permissible but saving lives by carrying a firearm is not?

Syd said it best.

HB 2807 – fail. No.

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Texas State Representative Lon Burnam (D-90, NRA “F” grade) recently introduced HB 2807 – Relating to creating an offense for the unlawful possession or transfer of a semiautomatic assault weapon.

There’s much that is wrong with this bill. What bothers me the most? Not just how it uses failed language. Not just how it places emphasis upon cosmetics and not upon anything of actual worth and meaning. Not just how it’s knee-jerk legislation. Not just how it criminalizes my ability to instruct children in gun safety and responsible gun use. But how it places undo burden upon the law-abiding. Why are there people who insist upon making the lives of good honest people more difficult and more cumbersome?

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.