During a June 27, 2016 concert in Pratteln, Switzerland, Tom Araya – singer and bassist for the band Slayer – had this to say during his stage rap:
Is it true that every household has to own a rifle or a gun? No? I thought everybody was supposed to have a rifle or a gun in their home. It’s not right? How else are you gonna defend your country?
Where you are in the world, you need to protect yourselves. Not from each other, but from invaders. And you know what I’m talking about, right? You should be aware of your invaders — people that come here to do you harm. It’s not right. You should be able to protect and defend your country. That’s the way it should be everywhere. ‘Cause when you don’t have anything to protect yourself or your fellow countrymen, what happens? People fucking die. They do! Don’t they? Yeah. You can see it going on.
I’m not gonna name names, but you can see what’s going on in other countries. ‘Cause they can’t protect themselves. And that’s what I’m talking about: being able to protect yourself and your fellow countrymen and your fucking country. I’m being serious, man. This isn’t a fucking joke. You know, it really sucks to know that other people die, because you can’t protect them. That fucking sucks.
Had an eye-opening practice session a couple days ago.
Karl’s trying to push me on some things (in a good way), and one is taking my performance up a notch. This was the first time I got to live-fire it, and it was full of learning.
Started off with my normal carry rig and shot the Rangemaster 3M Test, which I think is just a great, quick diagnostic. Shot it 3 times (first was totally cold), and times were in the high 8 seconds, which is about par for my performance. What I was happy about? Performing to my known level cold, instead of having to warm-up to it — which has been my norm for a while. What was I unhappy about? My time to first shot ran in the 1.6-1.8 range, which is slower than I want – I want to be consistent in IWB concealment draw from my normal carry rig (not like an IDPA gaming concealment rig) at 1.5 seconds (or less). I know what I need to do, I just need to get my body used to it. I think the thing I did at the end of this session may help me. The other thing was being slow on the reload: 2 seconds just sucks. I could really improve my 3M performance.
I then shot the 3 Seconds or Less drill one time just because. Did fine, until the final weak-hand and I dropped one. Ugh.
But that was the end of that. I just wanted to shoot these to see where I was with things.
The real work was taking off my carry rig and putting on the USPSA production-class gaming rig.
Karl wants me to work on getting a 1.0 second draw. Start at 3 yards, don’t worry about scoring, just make 1.0 and get a hit somewhere (anywhere) on cardboard.
I spent a while working that at 3 yards, then moved to 4, then 5, then 7. I was mostly at 3 yards to get the handle on things, and only moved back as I felt comfortable. I didn’t spend a lot of time at the other distances because ammo and time, and mostly they were “to see” how it went.
It was eye opening.
I think my fastest period was like 0.88, and it was on cardboard but I think a Charlie or Delta (don’t recall). I could get in the 0.9’s and get on paper. If I wanted to get in the A-Zone I did have to get a bit more sight picture – didn’t have to be textbook perfect, but I had to get SOME sort of index. If I had everything right (didn’t muff the draw), got some sort of acceptable sight picture, etc. I was pretty consistent in the 0.95 – 1.05 range. If something muffed, then something would blow: the time, the target, something.
For sure, as distance increased I had to be a little more sure on the sight picture, but interestingly I found that if I had a good body index/alignment and the draw was right, I could still hit 1.0-ish at 7 yards and A-Zone just fine. That is, it felt really no different at 3 or 7 yards what I was doing or seeing, and the key was my body index and having a solid and repeatable “drawstroke and presentation”.
A few other things?
Getting VERY aggressive on the draw. When you hear that beep, MOVE!!! Like you’re on fire. This easily made a 0.1 to 0.3 second difference, and the difference between making the 1.0 par time or not.
To help with the draw, it’s all about consistency. Getting that movement pattern to be repeatable, efficient, etc.. So you can just “drop you hand” and boom, it’s all right there.
I found that if I was trying the proper 4-count drawstroke, it was slower. If I basically smeared/skipped through step 2, I was a lot faster — and still got my hits.
So what to do in dry work for this?
Work on reaction time to the beep, and getting a solid and consistent draw, that has some sort of sight picture/index (with further distances being more picture perfect). And in doing this, working on index. I recall some Duane Thomas article on this somewhere; I’ll have to go find it again.
I expect this should help with my concealment work too. 🙂
Oh and I need to do a little Dremel work on this gaming holster. It hits the mag release button just right. So when I get aggressive and really get after getting the gun out from the holster, I draw… and my mag goes flying. 🙂 Not good.
Anyways, eye opening for sure. I’ve got work to do.
Shootings at schools are different. These events are acts of execution, not battles. They are no different from the guillotine, one lined up after another and sent to the next world.
And they are that way for one reason. Capacity.
The above comes from an article “I Am An AR-15 Owner And I’ve Had Enough“, written by Daniel Hayes. It was posted to Facebook by a friend of mine, and he found the article interesting and requested the opinions of gun-owner friends on it. While I commented on his FB posting, I wanted to post and expand upon my comments here.
Apparently, it’s a math problem
Mr. Hayes says “these events are acts of execution, not battles”. I agree. He says it’s because of capacity. I disagree.
He was able to push people away from him with long bursts of gunfire and barely give his victims a chance to take that split second, when he was reloading, to leap on him and tear him apart.
For those who haven’t fired an AR-15, you can’t underestimate the importance of this. Extended magazines are the reason the San Bernardino killers were so brash and confident in the attack they carried out. They knew that no one could get near them, that there would barely be a moment when they would be vulnerable to an unarmed person grabbing them and stopping them.
Give me three 100 round drum magazines and I could hold my whole block hostage for a day. Give me thirty 10 round magazines and someone will be able to stop me.
Mr. Hayes is saying capacity is the problem. If we could just force people to have to reload more often, we could stop these things from happening, because that would give us time.
Here’s a promotional and marketing video from SureFire, a manufacturer of 60-round and 100-round magazines for AR-patterned rifles. In this video, they take a fully automatic rifle (i.e. something highly regulated; that doesn’t get used in “mass shooting” despite media and politician hysterics and misinformation) and perform a demonstration; it’s useful to use a full-auto rifle for this demonstration because it takes the human-performance element out of the equation (no tired fingers). They use standard 30-round magazines and fire 200 rounds — it takes 37.51 seconds. They then use SureFire’s 100-round magazines to fire 200 rounds — it takes 18.50 seconds.
The numbers and performance speaks for itself. And SureFire is flat-out promoting that increased magazine capacity allows one to put more rounds downrange in less time.
One of my mentors and teachers, one of the best defensive handgun instructors in the world, Tom Givens of Rangemaster, stresses that the reason we prefer larger capacity firearms isn’t so we can shoot more – it’s so we can reload less. Why would we want to reload less? Because if you have to reload, that means you are out of the fight for however long it takes you to reload the gun. In a fight for your life, those seconds matter, so the less you have to reload, the less you’re out of the fight.
So, having to reload slows you down and takes you out of the fight – SureFire and Tom Givens both acknowledge it. Kinda sounds like Mr. Hayes has a point, eh?
However, I would assert Mr. Hayes is looking at the problem from one side. I’d further assert he’s failing to properly promote the solution he really seems to be putting forth.
Attitude
Mr. Hayes states a key factor in capacity is that the killer is able to walk around without fear — with safe knowledge that no one will fight back:
They knew that no one could get near them, that there would barely be a moment when they would be vulnerable to an unarmed person grabbing them and stopping them.
He continues saying the solution is to make these (would-be) killers fear:
There’s a saying that goes “when seconds count the police are only minutes away.” It’s meant to enforce the truism that we are all ultimately responsible for our own defense when the chips are down. But what it really reinforces is the importance of time. Time matters immensely when you’re defending yourself. You need time to do so. You need opportunity. Ban magazines over ten rounds. Give potential victims time and opportunity and in giving them that time we will deter murderers from attempting these mass shootings. They will fear that they won’t be able to kill enough to make their point before they are crushed by their chosen victims. They are cowards. Give them reason to fear.
Emphasis added.
Now let’s look at the whole of what Mr. Hayes is putting forth.
He’s saying if magazines had reduced capacity, that would necessitate more reloads, which would create more time-gaps, and in those time-gaps – people could fight back.
People could fight back.
Fight back.
So really, what Mr. Hayes is saying is fighting back is the best way to stop these things from happening.
Whodathunkit?
Well, it may seem obvious to me (and maybe you) that fighting back is the best solution, but we’ve become a society where “violence is never the answer” and where the response to rape is to pee on your attacker or just teach him not to rape. So there are people out there that cannot fathom fighting as a solution.
But time and time again, it’s been demonstrated that fighting back works – and is THE best solution.
So Mr. Hayes, I’ll agree with you there: we need to enable people to fight back.
Fighting Back
Enabling people to fight back starts by helping people overcome mentalities of helplessness. Thinking that someone else (you know, like a group of guys with guns — probably AR-15’s with 30-round magazines) will be your savior – or worse, that it’s someone else’s responsibility to save you, instead of your own. Because two big things our society suffers from these days are displaced responsibility and learned helplessness.
Mr. Hayes suggests that during a reload, people could jump on the shooter and tear him apart. Well, if you have no mindset of violence, of fighting, of “tearing people apart”; if you have no skills in unarmed combat; if you have no weapons on you or knowledge of how to use them… how in the world are you going to jump on someone and tear them apart? You will not suddenly rise to the occasion with the knowledge and skill of the War Gods; you will descend to your training. If you’ve never had any training, if you’ve never considered fighting, if you think “violence is never the answer” then it will continue to be your answer.
So the first thing we need to do is get people to realize that fighting back is key.
All the time-gaps in the world don’t matter if you don’t have the wherewithal to take advantage of them.
I’ll agree that rushing someone with a rifle could be a losing proposition. What would I prefer? My own tool, that can enable me to stay behind some sort of protection, while still “rushing” the attacker – you know, like my own gun. Ceasing restrictions and prohibitions on where I can carry it. Gun-free zones obviously aren’t; or at least, the only people that heed it are those who obey they law and aren’t a threat to your personal safety. These mass killers prefer gun-free zones because they know people won’t or can’t fight back.
And in fighting back, I want to ensure I can fight maximally. I don’t want to be out of the fight, so I want as much capacity as possible. Capacity works both ways: it helps us good guys too. Keep watching the SureFire video:
Q: Is that something you would have liked to have had on your last deployment?
A: Absolutely. To get that many rounds downrange on target is vital to winning the fight.
Last I looked at Tom Givens’ student incident data set, of the 65 cases there were no reloads, but a couple cases did end with an empty handgun. The range of shots fired goes from 1 to 12. Reducing capacity could have very well cost these innocent people their lives because you can’t fight with an empty gun; or if they could have reloaded it, those 3-4 seconds they were out of the fight for the reload could have been fatal. I mean, if Mr. Hayes thinks a reload is enough time to “leap on him and tear him apart”, again, that can work both ways and enable good people to be “torn apart”.
So you see, increased capacity works for preserving life as well. It very much enables us to stay in the fight, and go home to our loved ones. Just ask the police that you count on to come save you, if they’d prefer a 10-round magazine or a 30-round magazine. You want them to preserve your life, don’t you?
High-capacity magazines are not the problem, and banning or reducing magazine capacity will not solve the problem.
Mr. Hayes suggests we should crush these evil people and give them reason to fear. I would agree – so let us work towards that end. Abridging the law-abiding does not achieve this; enabling the law-abiding does. Work to enable the law-abiding.
We will make better progress if we start from where we agree and work with open minds and open hearts, than to start from where we disagree and drive the wedge even further.
Here’s a short video of Paul Howe himself demonstrating and explaining the CSAT Aperture:
And here’s another video that explains it a little more in-depth:
I finally got a chance to install them on my S&W M&P-15TS. It came with factory Magpul BUIS, and these TROY replace them. I do use a Aimpoint T-1 most of the time, but that’s what the BU in BUIS is about.
I started zeroing at 7 yards using the small peep, just to get on paper. Only had to make a slight windage adjustment to the rear. That was a small pain because the TROY uses a pin in the adjustment wheel to keep things in place. BUT, making it a pain to adjust means it’s a pain to adjust – accidentally. So I actually like that feature since it will keep things in place. Once I got on paper, I went to 10, 15, 25 yards, all standing, Things seemed to be working well.
When I got to 50 yards, I wanted to go prone. Well, that didn’t work. 🙂 I was of course shooting at the KR Training facilities. The past few weeks, Texas has been getting lots of rain, so that means grass has been growing and no mowing has been able to take place. Karl’s only been able to mow bare essentials for class, and so much of the non-essential areas are tall grass. Going back to 50 yards? Non-essential, tall grass, and when I went prone I couldn’t see the target at all. 🙂 I did some kneeling, but I suck at shooting from a kneeling position, so not an ideal way to try to zero. I figured there was no point in going back to 100 yards either. Of course now as I write this, I’m thinking I should have just pulled a barrel and bench back to 100 yards and shot from that, but I guess the Texas heat fried my brain and it didn’t occur to me. Ah well. Things do seem zeroed enough for now, and I can refine it later.
After that was done, I went back to 7 yards and played with the CSAT Aperture’s rear notch. It takes a little getting used to the sight picture, but it works great. At 7 yards I was POI = POA and that’s some surgical shooting. I was using a 3″ dot as a target area, and was drilling the center out just fine at 7 yards. So I played with distance. I went up to 3 yards and nothing — you’re just way too close, the bullet hasn’t has any time/distance to start rising, so it’s still holdover time. At 5 yards it was hitting at the bottom of the 3″ dot. Around 10-12 yards it was hitting the top of the 3″ dot (aiming at the middle of the dot). After that it rose pretty quickly out of the dot, so for sure it’s back to the peep.
The more I shot it, the more I got used to the new sight picture. Really, I am digging this.
It almost makes me want to shoot irons and not red dot. 🙂
And think about it. In a home situation, that sort of 5-10 yards is about your distances, yeah?
I did a little more shooting too.
Most of the work was just using some Freedom Munitions .223 Rem 55 grain new manufacture ammo. But I did switch to some Hornady TAP 5.56 55 grain GMX barrier-blind — just 1 box of 20 (because expensive and hard to find), but after I had things dialed in I tried that ammo. Fed and ran fine, and at these shorter distances I noticed no difference in trajectory or impact point vs. the Freedom Munitions. 100 yards will be more telling. Yeah, switching to the TAP 5.56 55gr GMX for more serious purposes (from the TAP 75 grain non-GMX stuff); seems to be the better recommendation these days.
Also just did a bunch of mag dumps — because fun. 🙂
A couple things I need to work on.
First, I should dry-practice my rifle more. I focus mainly on pistol, but I really should do rifle dry work more.
Second, I’d love to take Paul’s class again.
Third, when I shoot I need to square up my body more. I tend to get bladed and that puts more of the recoil into points in my shoulder/pectoral and it gets old after a while. If I’m more squared up, the recoil is spread out more and it’s more comfortable. This goes back to point 2, as dry work will help me get my body into the habit.
My friend Paul Martin participated in a panel discussion on campus carry sponsored by NEW Leadership Texas – part of the UT Center for Women and Gender Studies.
The audience leaned left of center, although there were at least two license to carry (LTC) holders in the group. They were very engaging and willing to listen to opposing viewpoints in a respectful way. Likewise, the panelists were respectful of each other despite the significant difference of opinion among us.
One of his observations stood out to me:
Those who oppose concealed carry have little understanding of the licensing process or the training curriculum. Students seemed surprised to learn that non-violent dispute resolution is a statutorily mandated curriculum requirement. There seemed to be some belief that 18 year olds can obtain a LTC (minimum age is 21, unless the applicant is active duty military or veteran).
Take that for what you will.
Still, Paul has a greater message:
We need to be taking these people to the gun range to let them experience it first hand. Some of the participants who visited with me after the event said that they were generally supportive of concealed carry but had some reservations – and these included people who expressed left of center political leanings. I took that as a good sign. But there are others who were indicated they were agnostic on the issue until they attended the event. We need to be doing a better job of inviting people who may not be “pro-gun” to the range in an effort to encourage people to have a better understanding of how guns work.
Bottom line: it’s about education. We can tell they don’t know, but chastising folks for their ignorance only serves to drive the wedge further, the strengthen alienation.
There was a time in American politics when we would “reach across the aisle”. Unfortunately today’s political climate seems to only want to yell, spit, and throw punches across the aisle.
If you’re willing to listen, I’m willing to teach. If you’re accepting of education, I’m happy to help. We can work together to have greater understanding, and that will yield better things; because allowing ignorance to rule and proceeding through life with ignorant zealotry, does no good for you or the world.
UT Alumnus Karl Rehn concurs, stating, “In the most likely scenario, those that want to carry at UT are going to arrive on campus with a round chambered and will have to handle their gun, most likely in the awkward, cramped space inside their vehicle, to un-chamber the round and reholster before leaving the vehicle. That’s a far more likely scenario for a negligent discharge than someone simply unholstering and putting the gun in a storage locker—and the working group has already rejected that idea as ‘too dangerous.’”
UT keeps talking about “safety”, yet this requirement works against that very desire on many levels.
“The weight of the deliberation was that we were going to go on the side of safety, as opposed to having the tactical advantage of having loaded weapons on campus,” [UT President Gregory] Fenves said.
That’s fine. You can poo-poo all the “tactical” reasoning as to why empty-chamber carry is a bad idea. Like I said, there are many reasons why empty-chamber is a bad idea, and in this discussion we can discard most of them in favor of just looking at what UT itself claims to want, which is safety. Fenves said it right there: they want safety above all things.
So tell me how forcing people to handle their guns leads to greater safety? This is as opposed to leaving your gun holstered and not touching it at all? Please answer the question. Please articulate how this is better, safer.
The thing is, UT didn’t consult any experts.
Asked later to point to which experts the school relied upon, spokesman Gary Susswein declined to do so.
He said the working group “did not formally hear from outside experts,” but that members spoke individually with law enforcement officials and others. He noted that the method “mirrors the policy used by the Israeli military.”
And he added that working group members with military experience “also used this approach at various times during their service.”
If they had gone to any actual industry experts, they’d be parading them around because it would certainly deflect the criticism. In fact, they flat out admit they didn’t hear from any outside experts – just anecdotal evidence. And frankly, if you know anything about those “sources”, you know they are questionable. This is akin to saying that I spend some time looking at the sky and reading weather.com, so I can speak to climate change.
But I know why such groups never consult with true experts: because they’d hear things they don’t want to hear.
You’d expect such intellectual dishonesty from Fox News or MSNBC. Not so much from a supposed institution of higher learning. And even worse when policy, rules, and/or laws are being made.
You are welcome to hate guns all you want. You are welcome to crusade for their banishment from the face of this Earth. But at least be intellectually honest about it, else you’re just a shyster and deserving of no respect.
Revolvers are SIMPLE in operation, but DIFFICULT in utilization. The long, DA trigger pull takes work to perfect. Sending that shot straight, takes precision and care. Of course, any of this can be addressed through practice, but I absolutely believe that it is easier to train a novice on a compact framed or full sized semi-automatic pistol, than it is to train the same person on a revolver. As much as I love K frame revolvers for all around use, the learning curve is steeper with the revolver, versus the semi-auto.
Simple in operation but difficult in utilization. This is the phrase I’ve been struggling to find. I see many people recommend revolvers for people who don’t train, aren’t willing to train/practice, etc. under the premise that they are simple to operate — “just point and click”. But most people cannot shoot revolvers as well as a semi-auto for all manner of reasons, and isn’t the desired goal to be able to shoot well and effectively?
A Glock operates just as simply, and more people can shoot it well and effectively. Certainly when you look at a semi-auto like a 1911 or a Beretta, the revolver operates more simply; but we live in the 21st century — our tools have improved. 🙂
The Pink Pistols maintain that, since “perceived sexual orientation” is the second most common source of animus in bias-motivated crimes (FBI Crime Statistics). This common animus, they further maintain, constitutes a clear and present danger to the sexual-minority community that predicates just cause to carry a firearm for self-defense. Further, they maintain that nowhere in the Second Amendment is the concept of “good reason” enumerated, and a requirement to show such special need is fundamentally unconstitutional. Today, the District Court agreed.
“I feared for my safety and I had a lot of security around me,” she told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on “At This Hour.” “I’ve never had anything like this happen.”
Stuff From Hsoi 