Guns

Class AAR: AT-2A (My) Home Defense Tactics

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Last night KR Training hosted its AT-2A Home Defense Tactics class. While I attended this class a few months ago, this time I hosted the class.

After experiencing the class myself, I wanted to host the class for a couple of reasons. First, it’d be nice to see what Karl thinks of my house from a defense/tactical perspective. Second, I wanted Wife to be involved. Wife cares about defense, she’s very keen on awareness. What I wanted her to get what some “formal schooling” and also some other perspectives on how our house stacked up. Plus hey, it’d be nice to let her finally see what it is I do all of those Saturday’s away from her and the kiddos. 🙂

This class ran like most instances of the class, just different due to it being a different house. There are numerous things I have already thought about, addressed, and tended to, but certainly some new and useful things came out of the event. There are a few things I’m going to work on to improve in the house, and some ideas I’m going to reject. For instance, making ground-level windows undesirable to go through. A suggestion from Karl is to put painful plants at such windows, like grow a holly bush or a rose-bush (all those thorns hurt) to discourage entry. While the suggestion in and of itself is a good one, it will not specifically work in my case due to botanical reasons (e.g. too much shade, those things just won’t grow). However, the alternative is putting things on the inside by the windows to discourage entry, such as large heavy objects in front of the window, or having lots of things that if a window was breached would cause lots of noise (e.g. lots of cheap fragile knickknacks on the window sill that get knocked off). That’s covered.

One very useful thing was addressing some of the “downstairs” issues. I hadn’t thought about one particular area being a “hunker down” spot, but Karl’s examination of things raised a lot of good points. Wife and I are looking at how we can tweak that spot to make it even better. It’s certainly going to be part of our plan.

The main thing to note is that no house will be perfect, all situations are going to have problems (e.g. stairs are just a problem that’s tough to overcome). But the best thing you can do is plan ahead. Examine the home from the exterior and the interior, looking at it with a mindset of “OK, if I was a criminal, what would I do?”. Look for those vulnerabilities. What can I do to make my house less attractive? Do you have children? How could they play into the situation? If say I have to run from my bedroom to the children’s room, what is that path like and what do I have to concern myself with? Can I do things to help improve that (e.g. motion detecting light switches, use of light and darkness)? How are things in the daytime? How are things at night? Every house is different so there’s no one blanket solution, but so long as you take the time to figure it out (and having an expert like Karl Rehn is certainly useful), that’s the key. Plan ahead so when the flag flies you can just go.

This morning, Wife came up to me and suggested some things from her own thinking. It wasn’t stuff that came directly out of the Karl (i.e. direct suggestion from Karl), but rather just how some scenarios played out, some examination of things, some other suggestions… put them all together, and Wife had some good thoughts on other improvements we could do. I must admit, it just tickled me that the class went over so well with her. I know she wasn’t looking forward to the class (she was thinking it’d be akin to some other classes I did, like maybe force-on-force classes), so I was happy to see how engaged she was in the class and how much she took from it.

That Wife got a lot out of it pleased me. Plus it put her a little closer to my wavelength on a few things, or at least she could see where I was coming from. We both got something out of it, individually and as a couple. I think the goals I set for hosting the event were met.

And of course… my “honey-do” list just got longer. 😉

Another perspective on Open Carry

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Today’s issue of The Shooting Wire contained an article from Tiger McKee with his take on open carry.

Tiger is against open carry, at least from a tactical perspective (he spoke in that regard, not a political or “rights” regard).

He mentioned one element that I haven’t heard many people bring up on the topic of open carry.

I also don’t want non-threats to know I’m armed. If something does break out these other people may expect me to save the day. When I use my weapon it’s because I decide based on the situation that’s it is necessary for me to use it. Others, especially those unfamiliar with conflict, may not be very objective when it comes to use of firearms. For example they may be counting on you using your weapon to keep the guy they’ve been mouthing off to from kicking their butt. They may think it’s worth risking your life to prevent a business from losing their money during a robbery. I only fight if it’s worth risking my life for, which is a very short list.

2009 FBI Crime Stats – an interesting tidbit

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

So the FBI released their crime statistics/summary for 2009.

Violent crime went down. Of course, everyone wants to come up with reasons for this. LA Times reports:

Crime experts have cited several possible explanations for the falling crime rate, including better policing, a swelling of the prison population, the decline of the crack cocaine epidemic and an aging population. But regardless of the reason, crime fell sharply during the 1990s and has declined gradually since then.

And you’ll have your pro-gun people attributing it to the fact that more law-abiding citizens are armed, and criminals don’t like getting shot either. I’m not going to hypothesize.

What I find more interesting is to look at the breakdown. Most of the breakdown is stressing “murder by firearm, especially handgun”. But look at the last column: “Hands, Fist, Feet, etc.” (which includes pushing). Almost 6% of the total murders used no weapon at all.

You ban guns, you ban knives, people are still going to find ways to commit evil acts. If someone really wants to hurt you or kill you, they will. Are we going to ban hands and feet? Violence is not an act of an implement — we don’t blame hands when someone pushes someone else off a cliff to their death, so why do we blame a gun when an evil person uses a gun to injure another?

(h/t Everyday No Days Off)

New Powders… Barnes & 6.8 implications?

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

This morning I read on The Firearm Blog that Hornady Superformance and LEVERevolution powders are coming in 2011.

The ammunition brought to market is interesting because it brings 100-200 fps more but still within SAAMI pressure specs. TFB has some hard data and graphs.

So what I wonder is…

Barnes Bullets like velocity. Generally speaking, the faster you can push ’em, the more performance you’ll get out of them. So if these new powders can get 100-200 fps more, what tangible gains could we see in driving those Barnes bullets?

Now, the 6.8 SPC was designed to be used out of rifles with shorter barrels (e.g. 14.5″, 16″, even Bill Wilson typically uses an 11″ to take feral hogs). These powders are about efficient burn:

They achieve this by developing a set of new powders and blending these powders specifically for each cartridge so that all the powders burns completely inside the barrel. This allows maximum power transferred to the cartridge but also lower muzzle blast, thereby reducing recoil.

So these powders in short-barreled rifles… could use of these powders “negate” the velocity loss you see by taking a couple of inches off your barrel?

Then, Barnes Bullets that like velocity, easier to handle SBR’s, powder that gives you more velocity (and less muzzle blast and less recoil and more efficient burn) well…. could this be a fantastic combination?

I’m really curious.

No Doves (today)

/ hsoi

Just spoke with my buddy.

The guy that owns the property we’d be dove hunting at came down with something… he’s been in bed all day, conked out. 😦

So, the dove hunt has to be postponed until next week.

Kinda a bummer because I was all pumped up, but also a blessing because well… I’m just not that much of a shotgunner. I spent today working the shotgun dry with some snap-caps, and while I’m pretty sure I’d bring down a few birds, a little more time to get some more practice is a good thing.

Plus, this means I can join the family at the church’s annual fair! Time for gorditas and roasted corn! 🙂

Julie Golob – 2010 Steel Challenge

/ hsoi

Yesterday I posted video of Julie Golob’s 2010 Wyoming Steel Challenge performance.

Here’s Julie’s performance at the 2010 Steel Challenge (world championship)

Great footage. Just watch her shoot. Form, technique. That’s solid shooting.

On AR lubricating and cleaning

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

There’s always some new cleaner and/or lubricant on the market, and everyone has their pet.

John Holschen, of InSights Training Center, has a pragmatic take on it:

Years ago I quit trying any of the “magic” lubes and just used CLP. None of the others seemed to offer any real increased performance and CLP worked fine, was relatively inexpensive, and readily available. I still like it.

For some forgotten reason I tried Mili-Tec a couple of years ago (applied it to small parts and heated in a 175 degree oven for 15 minutes or so.) I immediately noticed that cleaning the Mili-Tec treated guns was easier. Carbon buildup was diminished and what carbon there was came off much easier. The treatment lasted well over a year (cleaned with CLP, lubed with Mili-Tec) and I got to where I kind of forgot how hard it used to be to clean the carbon from around the feed ramps of my handguns and the bolt carrier on AR’s. Then I used a solvent tank to clean my handgun. Next time I went to clean it, it was heavily carboned and difficult to clean again. I cleaned it really well, retreated it with Mili-Tec and all is smiley/happy once again (no more solvent tanks though.)

There may be other new-generation lubes that work as well but I haven’t tried them. The Mili-Tec/CLP combo works fine so I don’t need to look for something else.

I’ve heard a lot of competition shooters respond to the question of “what lube do you use?” with something like “whatever I won at the last match”… implying it didn’t matter, it all works good enough — just be sure you use it.

And really, being lubricated is more important than being clean. Witness, just shy of 3000 rounds (no cleaning, no lube) and finally the AR malfunctions, but a single drop of oil on the bolt at the cam pin hole and she was back in action.

Furthermore, Vuurwapen says that  cleaning your AR-15 is a waste of time.

I love this quote from Karl Rehn:

It’s a battle implement, your not supposed to go home and spend an entire afternoon cleaning it. Just put a little lube on the critical parts and be done with it.

For me, well… sure there was a time in my life when I painstakingly disassembled each gun and worked to swab every corner until it was crystal clean. That got old pretty quick.

These days, it’s pretty simple. I keep CLP in my range bag because there’s limited room in the bag so to be efficient it’s nice to have something that will “do it all”. I also keep various bore snakes around. Furthermore, I keep ESCA Tech’s D-Wipes around and in the bag: good for cleaning off your hands, and they do a bang up job at gun cleaning too. A typical situation at the end of a gun range session might be field stripping the gun, drop of CLP on the bore snake and run it through the barrel, D-Wipe the parts down, CLP on moving parts to lube it up, and the gun’s back together. The only time I might get a little more painstaking about it might be for a gun that’s going to spend more time in storage than on the range (e.g. hunting rifle might get pulled out once a year, so clean well and prep for a year of storage).  And sure, every so often when the gun is disassembled I might notice it needs a deeper cleaning (e.g. crud building up in the extractor) so I’ll get a pick in there or some such thing.

FWIW, a few months ago I picked up some MILITEC-1 because I had heard a lot about it and was curious, and my experiences have been similar to Holschen’s. I see no reason to stop using it.

But the bottom line is: I don’t worry much about cleaning my guns. I worry more about keeping them lubricated. Guns get cleaned on an as-needed basis, and I don’t sweat it a whole lot. What lubricant to use? Whatever… pick one. Just be sure to use it… that means you, Ron. 😉

Legal Shotgun (for bird hunting)

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

In order for me to legally dove hunt in Texas, I need to follow some rules regarding the means by which I take the dove.

From TPWD on “means”:

Game animals and game birds may be hunted with any legal firearm, EXCEPT:

…

Magazine Capacity (number of shells/cartridges allowed): There are no restrictions on the number of shells or cartridges a legal firearm may hold when hunting game animals or game birds (except migratory game birds, see Legal Shotgun).

And when you look up Legal Shotgun:

Legal Shotgun: Shotguns not larger than 10 gauge, fired from the shoulder, and incapable of holding more than three shells (shotguns capable of holding more than three shells must be plugged with a one-piece filler which is incapable of removal without disassembling the gun, so the gun’s total capacity does not exceed three shells).

So since I’m going to be hunting with a Mossberg 500 12 gauge (pump action), I need to plug my magazine to only hold 2 shells (2 in the mag, 1 in the chamber). No problem there, the shotgun came with a special dowel, which actually was so long it prevented anything from going into the magazine, so I just cut it down to size and there we go.

However, this particular shotgun happens to double as a home-defense tool, so it has a TacStar SideSaddle bolted onto the side of it. Hrm…. how does TPWD define “incapable of holding more than 3 shells”? Because that saddle sure lets the gun hold 6 shells. I’d hate to have a visit from the Game Warden and get nailed on a technicality. So I called TPWD and spoke to whomever answered the phone. He told me that yes, this is perfectly legal. What matters is the ability to keep rattling off shots… you really only get 3 shots per “run”, and that’s the intent. But a way to just carry more ammo? Not a problem.

So based upon TPWD’s guidance, I’m going ahead and I’ll leave the saddle on there. Meantime, I will also drop them a line to ask if they could clarify the wording.

Updated: So when you have a question, it won’t get answered if you don’t ask it to the right people.

Tho I had called, it’s nice to get things in writing. I sent TPWD an email to 1. ask 2. request they clarify the documents. I’m not sure they groked my request to actually update the documentation, but they did write back saying:

The firearm itself chamber or magazine included may not hold more than 3 shotshells at any time while hunting any migratory birds.

So there you go.

Julie Golob – Wyoming State Steel Challenge 2010

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This is a great video of Julie Golob from the 2010 Wyoming State Steel Challenge

I like how it shows a diagram of the stage, then shows her shooting it. You can see how one of the best shooters in the world preps, plans, and shoots the stages.

Is she fast? Yes. But notice, she’s not too fast. She’s not shooting faster than she can get good hits. In fact, some of the shooting seems downright slow, but you have to remember she’s shooting at small targets a long ways away (refer to the stage diagrams in the video). The take-home is shooting fast doesn’t necessarily mean emptying your magazine in 2 seconds, but going only as fast as you can that allows you to still get the hit. Speed is important, but accuracy is king. I still have to remind myself of this… probably why I posted this. 🙂

Dove hunting

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

It’s dove hunting season here in Central Texas.

I know some people dedicated to it. Me? It’s just not my thing.

First, I’m not really a shotgunner. I just don’t shoot them much, thus I don’t get much practice shooting flying things (be it clays or birds). The times I’ve shot skeet I really enjoyed it, but I just don’t seek it out (handguns are my focus). Second, shooting doves seems like a lot of work for little gain. All the feather plucking, cleaning, prep, and so on… just for a little nugget of meat? I guess that’s why if I’m going hunting I tend to prefer bigger animals (e.g. I am dreaming of elk hunting one of these days). The cost-benefit ratio just seems slightly better there. So the dove thing just hasn’t appealed to me.

However….

A guy I know from Scouts and church is an avid dove hunter. Last year we were talking about it and he made comments to me that I should go out with him; I passed. This year he started on me again and I said “why not?”. So I pulled the 18.5″ barrel off my Mossberg 500 (it’s a field version, wood furniture) and put the field barrel back on with a modified choke. I went out and bought some 7.5 shot shells. Got my hunting license with the migratory bird stamp. And… I’m ready. 🙂

Haven’t gone out yet. I’ll be talking with my friend tonight to figure things out, but it looks like maybe this weekend.

I figure why not? Try it. If I get something, great. If I don’t, it should just be fun to get out and try. Lord knows doves are not in short supply around here…. I’ve seen 2 dozen in my yard at times, and I must admit when I see that I have thought about how tasty that could be, if only I didn’t live in the city. 😉

We’ll see how it goes. If any of you are dove (or bird) hunters and have tips for me, please share in the comments.