Guns

HB 681 – time to be heard, Rep. Workman

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

HB 681 (Relating to an employee’s transportation and storage of certain firearms or ammunition while on certain property owned or controlled by the employee’s employer) is scheduled to be heard by the Texas House Committee on Business and Industry on Monday February 28, 2011.

Alright Paul Workman. You are my representative. You also sit on the Business and Industry Committee. You received an A grade from the NRA (and the TSRA), which I know helped you get elected. I’ve written you on other issues, but haven’t heard anything (sad, given how Valinda Bolton, who you beat, was very responsive). I just wrote you on this issue urging you not only to quickly pass the bill as written, but to also sign on as a co-author.

We are watching. And yes, we will remember when it comes time to vote again… or when you ask for campaign contributions… or otherwise generally go about your business. Remember, you were elected to represent us and do our bidding.

Updated: Good news everyone! Looks like Rep. Workman JUST signed on as a co-author. I checked the HB 681 co-authors page before writing this entry and his name wasn’t there. But it is now. And the date next to his name is today (2/23/2011) so he literally just signed on.

Excellent!

Why suppressors?

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Why suppressors (silencers) for firearms?

Because it’s polite.

Put it this way. Ever hear a car engine without a muffler? Probably not. So have you heard a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that’s so loud it rattles your fillings loose? Most motorcycles that are that loud are that loud because their exhaust pipes don’t have mufflers. Imagine if we didn’t mandate mufflers for cars and trucks? Imagine how loud and unbearable that would be, and how much damage it would do to your hearing.

Suppressors for firearms are no different. A gunshot can register 120-150dB or more (conversations are 60-70dB, rock concerts register maybe 115dB, jet engines are 140dB). Exposure to sounds that loud will damage your hearing. But more than that, all that noise is going to bother your neighbors.

A local gun range was putting on night shoot matches. While I’ve been unable to participate in them, it was not only a cool thing but was also one of the few opportunities people might have to practice shooting at night. Come on… if we’re all expecting home invasions in the middle of the night, wouldn’t it be good to be able to have practice shooting with flashlights in a low-light situation? Alas, they had to cancel the matches now and for the foreseeable future because of noise complaints. It’s understandable. I mean, if it’s 9:oo PM and there’s a lot of loud noise and I’m trying to get my kids to sleep, I’d complain too no matter what the source of the noise was.

Suppressors could help mitigate this situation.

I did a hog hunt at night where we used suppressed rifles. Why? because it was polite to the neighbors and land owners, as well as the local law enforcement.

We can buy suppressors here in Texas, but there are tons of legal hoops and expense to go through to get them. Why? We don’t cause people this much grief to get a new muffler for their car; in fact, if you didn’t have a muffler on your car you’d get in trouble for that! Why can’t I just go to the local gun shop, buy a suppressor, and be off and running… quietly?

“… with good shot placement…”

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

A lot of people consider .223 Remington to be an inadequate cartridge. I wouldn’t try taking an elephant with it, but with the right bullet and load it can certainly take deer and hogs.

But its use in that context always gets predicated with the statement: “with good shot placement”. Something like “yeah, .223 will work, but you have to have good shot placement”.

Is there any bullet that doesn’t work with good shot placement?

If you miss (the definition of “bad shot placement”), the bullet won’t work.

If you hit the deer on the left rear foot with a .45-70, while his day is going to suck, that still won’t “do the job”.

Any time you shoot you need to have good shot placement. The only way any bullet will do its job is to put it in the vital organs. I understand the point of the statement is because with larger, more powerful rounds, you can have a greater margin of error since it’ll hit the target with more oomph, do more damage, thus if you’re off you still have good chances of bringing down your quarry. But big-ass guns should not be a crutch for poor marksmanship.

I maintain that good shot placement should be a given and always in effect, no matter what you’re shooting.

Before I get all righteous in thinking we need to do away with this useless qualifying statement, is there any sort of situation where it’s a valid qualifier?

Inexpensive target ideas

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

This is very cool! A website where you can design and then print your own custom targets. (h/t ENDO)  It’s quite full featured and it’s free!

Unless I need some sort of specific target, I like finding free target websites and just printing my own targets. I even made a few quick and dirty targets of my own:

I use those targets for dry fire practice. Buff color because it’s the color of cardboard. The dots are just useful to provide a small target, or multiple small targets. The scaled IPSC targets are of the size that, when I’m physically 2 yards away from the target, they will provide a scaled size simulating their distance (7 or 15 yards). All are intended to be printed out on a 8.5″x11″ piece of paper.

Another simple and inexpensive target solution is paper plates. Avoid the 9″ plates. Get the smaller “dessert” plates that are what? 5-6″ diameter? Aim small, miss small. 🙂  And you don’t need Chinet, the cheapest bulk paper plates at the grocery store are fine.

Do you get lots of cardboard? Maybe from packages/boxes being shipped to you. After a Costco trip we always end up with lots of cardboard. As a result, any cardboard that’s of a reasonable size I keep stacked in the garage. Quick and simple targets or target backers. I even cut out a crude template that replicates the IPSC A-Zones. Ten seconds tracing with a pen and viola, I’ve got a cheap simulation of an IPSC target, or at least, the zone that matters. To boot, this is a nice “green” solution, since I’m reusing the existing cardboard before ultimately recycling it.

If you want to talk recycling, how about junk mail? An 8.5″x11″ piece of paper can make a reasonable target for “defensive practice”. I still think it’s a bit large of a target area, but it’s fast and easy enough. Or if you want, since most junk mail letters will be tri-folded, cut it into strips along those fold lines for a smaller and more challenging target.

I just don’t feel like spending a lot of money on targets. By their nature they’re going to be destroyed and you can’t reuse them. Those “shoot and see” things are really nifty, but that cost adds up. I love shooting proper IPSC/IDPA targets, but at $0.50 each vs. $0.00 for recycling the cardboard from a UPS shipment? I know which math I prefer. Sometimes yes you need a specific target, yes you have to spend the money. But for general work, there are lots of inexpensive ways to get the job done just fine. Furthermore, I think the variety is good for your eyes and your skills.

Do you have any other suggestions for inexpensive or free target solutions?

All the prep work… oye

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

Now I remember why I don’t like reloading rifle cartridges.

All the prep work. 🙂

I’m finally getting back on the reloading wagon. After doing some clean and lube maintenance on the presses, I took 100 pieces of new .223 Remington Remington-brand brass and started the prep work on them. I opted to use the single-stage press and just did a full-length resize (small-base die) on all 100 pieces. I then trimmed the cases to 1.740″. Why that low? I’m going to use my new RCBS X-Die and, if I read all the directions correctly, you take the brass, do a full-length resize, then trim it 0.020″ under the max case length. Thus for .223 Rem it comes out to 1.740″. Run it through all the stations on the RCBS case prep tool (chamfer and debur the mouth, uniform the primer pocket, etc.). And then we’re done. Ugh. 100 cases took almost 2 hours. It’s just slow and tedious.

Once I finished all of that, I did set up the X-Die on the Hornady Lock-n-Load progressive press. Haven’t set up the rest of the progressive press yet. I’m curious to see how the X-Die works out, and of course if I set things up correctly. 🙂  I figure any time from here out when I deal with brass I’ll first use the single-stage press to do the full-length resize, trim it for the X-Die, then from here on out I hope I can skip all that prep work and can just go straight to the X-die on the progressive press. Hopefully in the long run that will save some time and trouble, yet still yield quality ammo.

Rereading the last iterating of my plan, I think it’ll work out. I don’t see any need to change plans. The one thing I’m not sure about tho is my sights. See, the particular AR I’ll be using presently has irons, and will have an Aimpoint CompM4s as soon as it gets here. Will that be an accurate enough scope for the load development? I’m not sure. I mean, a 2 MOA dot, trying to develop an accurate load… I’m not sure I’ll get there. Trouble is, I don’t have another scope to go around. What I might end up doing is taking the scope off my 6.8 SPC hunting rifle and putting it atop my Rock River Arms upper. Thing is there, that’s a stainless steel barrel, 1:8 twist, Wylde chamber and well…. should I work to develop for that when it’s not what I’ll generally use? Conversely, shooting the load out of both uppers would help me determine what’s going to be more general-purpose useful out of any upper I have. So… I’m not sure yet how I’ll do the testing. But I guess I need to go figure that out before I start loading.

Your bias is showing

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Local news channel “YNN – Austin” covers the concealed carry on campus debate. The article focuses on Colin Goddard and John Woods.

One state legislator wants concealed carry laws for college campuses across the state, but two men impacted by the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech are fighting those efforts.

Colin Goddard was shot four times during the Virginia Tech incident. John Woods’ girlfriend was among the 32 victims in the shootings. Together, they are asking Texas lawmakers to reject efforts to allow concealed handgun license owners to carry weapons into campus buildings.

And yes, they have a quote from Rep. Joe Driver, sponsor of the legislation. But the article then goes on about the man who ran onto the University of Texas campus last year with a rifle and shot himself.

Hrm. Have we forgotten about how Charles Whitman was stopped? Who is Charles Whitman? Why, he’s the man who in 1966 climbed to the top of the tower on the University of Texas campus and starting shooting people. What helped stop him? Students running back to their dorm rooms, fetching their deer rifles, and shooting back.

Imagine that. People fighting back stops crime. If you say it doesn’t, then please start recommending rape victims just lie back and take it.

Imagine that. Police and others didn’t mistake the citizens for the criminal. Sure there was chaos abounding, but they knew who was the bad guy and who were the good guys. I dare say with 40+ years of advancements in training — especially in dealing with active shooter situations — we just might be OK.

Imagine that. The people there on the scene were the ones able to respond. Yes police arrived, but it takes time for them to show up. The people right there right now are the ones able to respond the quickest.

 

Goddard contends campus security, alerts, background checks and mental health evaluations should be the focus not more guns.

 

 

Tell me. How is that going to help anything? I do agree that alert systems using text messages, email, social media and whatnot are good things to quickly spread information and certainly we should use them where we can. But how is that going to stop the problem? If some nutjob starts injuring people, how is an alert going to stop the immediate act of injury and death? How will a background check stop the injury and death? How will mental health evaluations stop injury and death? And unless you put a cop every 5 feet, you cannot be sure one will be around when you need it. So please, Mr. Goddard, tell me how do you deal with the immediate problem? We do what we can as a preventative measure, but the reality is that you can’t stop crazy, you can’t eliminate it from the face of the Earth. So while those other measures might be nice, we also need to be able to address evil swiftly and firmly when it makes itself known.

But to hear this from the local news media… the bias is not surprising. But who knows. With all the local journalists and lobbyists that obtained CHL’s merely so they could have “easier” access into the Texas State Capitol building, maybe, just maybe, going through the process they gained a little more insight into the fact that CHL-holders are good people, just like them. It’s still early. We’re still hopeful.

 

Manners Matter

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Gun Bloggers have been tra-la-laing recently about open carry and manners.

I think it started over at Breda’s place. Unc discusses more.

The thing is, do you view open carry as a political movement? Or just something to do, as normal as putting on your pants in the morning? If you view it politically, manners matter. You aren’t going to win people over to your side if you act like an asshole. Granted, you may not win them over if you’re well-behaved, but it does improve your chances. But if you view open carry as just something to do, or your God-given right, or whatever, then hey… if you’re normally an asshole, you’re still going to be an asshole with a gun on your hip or not. Frankly, I’m not going to tell anyone how to behave because we’re not all in this for politics. As well, as soon as I start telling someone else how to behave, that means they can tell me how to behave, and I’m not hip to that.

Furthermore, we have to remember that our little world of gun-totin’ folks is composed of a wide array of people. We aren’t going to all agree on everything, so before we start the in-fighting, we might as well stop because we aren’t all going to see eye-to-eye on how to promote, how to behave. And as much as we all love living free, that implies we also don’t care for other people to tell us how to live our lives. So if someone doesn’t want to be well-mannered well, that’s their prerogative.

Unfortunately, it can reflect badly upon the rest of us.

I do think you get further in life being polite and good to others; that whole flies and honey vs. vinegar thing. For instance, consider Linoge’s WizardPC’s story. And we have to remember that. In anything in life, any group, any movement, any thing… there’s always going to be some bad apples, there’ll always be someone who is a less than model citizen. So what should we do? Just continue to be the role model. In the end, most people are rational and will see that the majority are good folk and things are alright. Why? Unc said it best:

And that is why we should play nice. So the other side comes off as loons. Not us.

GunVault part deux

/ hsoi

A few weeks ago my GunVault safe failed to open. I contacted the company, and they said a replacement unit would be shipped out.

The replacement arrived a couple of days ago. I immediate put it into action.

Of course, the first thing I looked at was the unlock mechanism. It appears to be the same thing: a little steel cord. So I get the feeling it could break again. But of course, looks can be deceiving… I can’t get inside the mechanism to fully examine it nor a prior unit that was in an unbroken state so… I can’t really say for sure if the problem will never happen again.

I can say there appear to be a few minor changes tho. The keypad buttons stuck out a little more and had a bit nicer feel to them, a little more definitive, not as sensitive. I’m hip to that change. When the door opens, it doesn’t make as much noise, which is good. And the foam lining also feels better. Minor things, but it feels like improvements were made.

So I’ll give GunVault credit for standing behind their product and replacing the faulty product no questions no charge (even providing a UPS return shipping label to ship back the failed vault, which I wouldn’t be surprised if they reconditioned and resold, which is fine).

Do I trust it? Well, I’m wary, that’s for sure. It’ll always sit in the back of my head that it may fail when I least need it to. Crazy thing is, just this past weekend Karl told me how he was able to get his V-Line pure mechanical lockbox totally locked up. I forgot to get the details about the failure from him but geez… confidence is not high here. Granted, anything mechanical can and will eventually fail, but when it’s a life-saving device you really want those chances of failure as close to zero as possible.

For now, I’ll continue to use the replacement GunVault unit. But I’m going to be seeking an alternative solution.

Utah gun-permit bill moving along

/ hsoi

It looks like Utah’s SB36 is on its way to the governor

The Legislature gave final approval Monday to a bill that would require out-of-state gun owners who seek a Utah concealed-weapon permit to first obtain a permit from their home states, if available.

The Senate voted 25-0 to accept earlier House amendments to SB36 and sent it to Gov. Gary Herbert. The House changes make it clear that out-of-state residents could apply immediately for a Utah permit if their home state does not recognize Utah’s.

As I mentioned before, I like this because it’s Utah fixing Utah’s problems, so hopefully that means Texas HB 356 can be withdrawn. I am going to drop a line to Rep. Burnam accordingly.

NRA Personal Protection Outside the Home

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I am now (almost*) a certified instructor in NRA Personal Protection Outside the Home (PPOTH). In short, this is the NRA’s course for teaching private citizens how to draw a handgun from a concealed holster and use it as a last resort for self-defense.

I spent Valentine’s Day weekend working on this certification, because I love what I do and I do this for those that I love. It was long and intensive – 33 hours of training in 3 days. First we take the actual PPOTH course (14 hours), then we learn how to teach the course (19 hours). It was taught by Wendell Joost and Dave Burdett, hosted at KR Training.

The stated course goal:

To develop in students the knowledge, skills, and attitude essential for avoiding dangerous confrontations and for the safe, effective, responsible, and ethical use of a concealed pistol for self-defnse outside the home.

Students are expected to already know fundamentals of marksmanship and personal defense, as NRA Personal Protection Inside the Home is a prerequisite (there is also a pre-test that can be administered to waive this requirement). PPOTH provides important foundational material such as how to select proper equipment; proper mindset for concealed carry; dealing with the physical, mental, emotional, and legal aspects of concealed carry; and fundamental shooting skills for the context. The shooting skills build from the basics of drawing from a holster, to shooting multiple targets, use of cover, different shooting positions (e.g. kneeling, squatting, turning, basic movement). Even drawing from other carry methods like a holster purse. Yes… nothing like 12 guys struggling on the firing line not with how to shoot, but with how to carry and use a purse. 🙂  But it’s good because as instructors we can encounter students that don’t fit our personal mold, e.g. a right-handed semi-auto shooter. We could have a lefty shooting a revolver (note: 99% of revolvers are right-hand biased, and not very lefty friendly), we could have a woman who wishes to carry in her purse. We need to know how to work with these things.

Overall, the material in the PPOTH course is pretty good; we were pleasantly surprised. The material is nothing groundbreaking and isn’t on the cutting edge of carry techniques (e.g. it doesn’t mention the “cheek index” flashlight technique, which is de rigueur these days), but overall what’s presented and how it’s presented is quite solid. Yes, we came to learn and understand lots of “design by committee” and internal politics that went into producing this course, so I’d have to give it a B+ rating. There are a few little nits, printing errors, and stuff  you can easily overlook and forgive. There are some inconsistencies, e.g. some shooting exercises reuse the “ready” command to mean two different things, so it’s best for any prospective instructor to reconcile the instructor manual and the range drill manual AND also run through everything outside of a class and add your own notes to ensure typos and omissions don’t catch you.

One thing that really bugged me was how during instruction they say:

You should never search and assess with an empty gun. Always reload before scanning and assessing the area. (Instructor manual, page V-15)

But then all the range commands during the shooting drills have you scan then reload. The instructor manual does attempt to excuse it by saying “However, for training purposes, when you exhaust your ammunition on the last shot of an exercise, do not reload before scanning and assessing.” (V-15) But this is bad! Page II-3 of the Instructor manual says:

The way you train is the way you will react under stress. This is why you will train to develop proper habits, such as immediately seeking cover.

I agree. You will fight the way you train. I recall a story of a police officer that was killed in the line of duty. The way the police department gun range operated, you shot your revolver, then you could not drop the empty cases onto the floor: you had to dump them into your hand, put them into your pocket, then reload. Well, this officer was in the field, got into a gunfight, and was killed. When the officer was found, he had empty cases in his hand because he was fighting like he trained: wasting time with range administrative nonsense instead of getting his gun and himself back into the fight. I don’t know exactly why the NRA chose to say one thing then train another – that’s bad. They should be training that if your gun runs dry, immediately get it back into action. The gun should be ready for action before you scan. If this class is out to introduce people to concepts, if this is the first time students could be learning such concepts, then we should be setting them up for success in everything we do and teach. We should be carving those initial neural pathways with the 100% right way to do things, not cluttering them up with administrative nonsense that won’t serve to help them.

I am making a big deal out of that one because it stood out to me, but that is just one. On the whole, NRA PPOTH is a good course and is generally full of good material. Material that, with a good instructor that cares enough to make the right corrections and spit-and-polish where needed, can make PPOTH into a very good course for teaching these concepts. I find PPOTH is a good introduction to all the factors that come into play when it comes to concealed carry. Couple that, at least here in Texas, with the Texas CHL course, tests, and requirements, and someone who wishes to carry a concealed handgun should have a good start on things. I say start because I highly encourage people to seek greater, deeper, and continuing education. Obtaining your CHL is just the beginning and should open the gate for more education.

One other thing I got out of the weekend? I’m embarrassingly out of practice. 😦 I know why… the job change has me down, stress, and so on. It’s no excuse, but it is why. But I am wanting to use it as motivation to not just get more practice, but to ensure I get out and shoot more because yes, it’ll be a stress reliever. The weather appears to be improving here too (the 3 class days had perfect weather), so maybe that means soon I can be back at the reloading bench getting to work on my .223 loads… but I digress. That said, I did spend most of the weekend shooting my snub revolver, and that was fun. 🙂

I’d like to thank Karl Rehn for hosting the event. I’d also like to thank Dave Burdett for coming down from College Station, and Wendell Joost for coming out from Seattle. It was a pleasure to meet and work with both of them, and I’m sure we’ll continue to cross paths in the future. It was cool to finally meet Dave Re, and we got to talking about a project to do together (stay tuned). And finally, I’d like to give thanks to Tom Hogel, for being my snubbie brother this weekend and always being there to bust my chops. 🙂

(*almost – just a matter of paperwork and processing; all the heavy lifting is complete)

Updated: Dave Re, another student in the class, posted to his blog about his experience.