Guns

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.

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)

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.

Burglary suspect in Houston shot by CHL holder

/ hsoi

Anti-gun folks keep touting that concealed handguns only lead to more crime, more violence, that there’s no proof they actually do anything good to stop crime.

So I offer you this recent news item:

HOUSTON – A burglary suspect was shot in the stomach Tuesday after a couple caught him in the act, police said. (h/t Tim)

Police said the man was going office to office on the fourth floor, looking for things to steal, when insurance business-owner Sherri Jones found him rummaging through her purse. Jones confronted him, but she said the suspect threatened her. That’s when her husband intervened.

Investigators said Gary Jones warned the suspect he had a concealed weapon, but the suspect continued to struggle with him.

“He told him, ‘I have a pistol I don’t want to have to pull it on you,’ and the guy just kept on and kept on until he said he just wasn’t gonna take a beating anymore,” said Terry New, a witness.

[…]

New added that he thought Tuesday’s incident showed the importance of the concealed handgun license.

“The police can only do so much to protect us,” he said. “Sometimes we have to take matters into our own hands and this was one of those times.”

[…]

11 News Legal Analysis Gerald Treece said the shooting was justified in more than one way.

“Justification in self defense, justification in defense of his spouse, and the fact that a crime was being committed,” Treece said.

 

Introduction to Range Safety and Etiquette

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I went to the local indoor range yesterday but the range wasn’t quite open since they were finishing some welding. So I sat outside on a bench (beautiful morning), pulled out my iPhone and checked my email.

An email from the National Shooting Sports Foundation came in and it was telling about the release of their new YouTube video on indoor range safety. Nicely timed. 🙂

One little nit. He suggests using both ear plugs and ear muffs for children. I would drop the “for children” qualifier. The noises are just as loud and do just as much damage to an adult as it would a child, tho likely a child has more hearing to lose and is going to be more sensitive to loud noises. I always recommend folks use both muffs and plugs at indoor ranges because it makes a big difference. Be sure when you use plugs that you insert them properly (you don’t just squish them into your ear). Furthermore with children, their ear canals may not be deep enough to accept adult ear plugs, so you may need to trim the back-end of the plug a bit so that plus muffs won’t leave the child uncomfortable; yes it may reduce the capabilities, but better than the child complaining or worse, removing their muffs to relieve the pain. I also noticed the man in the video had ear muffs that were very small and thus likely have a low NRR. You should strive to have the highest NRR possible. You don’t need fancy electronic muffs; they don’t cancel noise, they just amplify sound so you can better hear people talking, but then they’ll cut off the amplifier when they hear a sudden loud sound… so any noise reduction is just from the passive muffs themselves. You can buy high-NRR-rating passive muffs for about $20. Small price to pay to help preserve your hearing. Plus, the more you reduce that noise, the less likely you are to flinch. Want to develop a good flinch? shoot at an indoor range with minimal hearing protection.

Apart from that, I thought this was an excellent video on not just gun safety and range safety, but specifically indoor range safety.

Fr. Frog on 6.8 SPC

/ hsoi

Fr. Frog has a lot of great stuff on his website.

I just noticed he has a page all about the 6.8 SPC. It’s not too long of a read, giving some history of development and discussion of ballistics. This is why I like 6.8 SPC.

Reading that makes me itch. I have not had time to get to the reloading bench (what with my Hsoi Enterprises work as of late). Last thing I did was prep a bunch of .223 brass. Zeroing the Aimpoint, talking with a friend about attending an Appleseed, it all makes me itch for wanting to get to rifle reloading. My desire to load .223 is merely for reloading practice. My ultimate goal is to make 6.8 ammo. I want more hours in a day! 🙂

Back from the range

/ hsoi

Went to the local indoor gun range today. Got their early and had my plans foiled: the range wasn’t open yet. Last night they had a lot of welding and rebuilding going on. They redid all the target rails. They are more heavy duty, no more wobble. Everything was tight and solid. The welders were finishing up so the range opened up a little late, but it was worth it.

What was the reason for the range trip? I got my Aimpoint CompM4s. Had to get it mounted and zeroed.

Everything was to be zeroed at 50 yards. This is part of that Revised Improved Battlesight Zero. With the irons I could only do so much since the rear is just a flip-up BUIS so no elevation adjustment, and of course the Aimpoint is a different beast. But the key was using a 50 yard zero, thus giving me that “ideal battlesight trajectory” from 0 to 200-250 yards.

I started with irons and some 55gr. FMJ Georgia Arms Canned Heat. Ensured things were on paper, then turned to Hornady TAP FPD .223 Rem 75gr.. A few adjustments and things were looking as good as my eyes would get them. Once that was all set, I put the Aimpoint on. I’m using their QRP2 mount, with the spacer. It’s certainly good enough. Yeah, a Larue mount would be cool, but that’s more money I don’t want to spend right now. Aimpoint’s is good enough.  I repeated the same process, starting with the 55gr. FMJ. The Aimpoint was close to zeroed from the factory, shooting about 1.5″ left and a hair high. I didn’t bother adjusting the scope with the FMJ rounds since they were on paper and close enough. Put in the TAP, a bunch of tweaking, and she’s about as good as I’ll get. I say that because with that 2 MOA dot, there’s only so accurate you can get. I did try a few things to help, like turning the brightness down as low as I could get, which helped. Usually I use one of their fluorescent red sight-in targets, but I thought maybe black would allow the dot to show up better. It didn’t really, plus it made it harder to see my holes. So back to the red targets. And overall the grouping and accuracy was good given the limits of the system I was working with.

I’m pleased with most things. But yes, most.

I noticed a lot of the holes in the target weren’t clean round holes. Were the bullets keyholing? Possible. I’d need to shoot at 100 yards but didn’t have enough time or ammo today to try. I think those 75 grain TAP bullets might be pushing the limits of the 1:9 twist of this barrel. But the interesting thing was I also noticed the 55gr. bullets were making similar holes. Nothing was a full-profile keyhole, just you might notice a little “tearing” on one side of the target more than the other. I’m not sure. The target was also moving some due to the air circulation system, maybe that. I need more research.

Bottom line: I’m happy with things. I really like the Aimpoint. Both eyes open, point and click. Just put the dot on what you want to shoot and press the trigger. So nice.

I also rotated my carry ammo, shooting what I had on me and replacing it with new stuff. Boy, you go from shooting plinker reloads to shooting 124gr. +P, and it sure feels different in your hands. 🙂