Guns

AAR – KR Training – Basic Pistol 1 – 2013-05-11

/ hsoi / 11 Comments

This past Basic Pistol 1 @ KR Training was different, for me at least.

It was my first time as lead instructor. I’ve been an assistant instructor at KR Training for a number of years, and I’m happy in that capacity. But now I get to step up and do a little more. While the past some whiles I’ve done segments of the BP1 class, this was doing the whole thing and well… it didn’t go as smoothly as I wanted it. Others thought I did fine, and I know my critique is just me looking at myself and what I can do improve my own presentation and flow. Always looking for things I can do better.

That said, the class itself went really well.

First, the weather was perfect. It always seems the case: weather reports for rain, there’s rain Thursday or Friday, people get nervous… but then, it always clears up and is gorgeous. Rare is the Saturday class actually rained out, and often is the weather agreeable. This was a great day to be outside and on the range.

I always like reporting on demographics. This class was over two-thirds female. Had a couple mother-daughter. Had people from all walks of life, social background, ethnicity/race. I’m sorry, but the stereotype of “old white redneck guy” just isn’t the case.

This group of students was very engaged, asking a lot of questions going beyond the BP1 material. I hope to see everyone back for future classes!

I think the only bummer of the day was the fire ants. With all the recent rain, they were driven out of the dirt — mounds everywhere. Just had to tread carefully, and thankfully not too many mounds on the range.

Thank you all for coming out and entrusting us with your first steps on this journey.

 

How to lose friends and alienate people

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

So long as you deny our humanity, so long as you malign our dignity, intelligence and wisdom, so long as you seek to shade us under a cloud of evil that we do not partake in or support, so long as you tell us that because we own guns we are terrible people, you will prove yourselves absolutely right in that we won’t come to the table to talk with you.

This. So very much, this.

Read the full article. It’s long, but well-written. (h/t Jon Thomas)

They want to have a “national conversation on guns”, but there’s no conversation. It’s just a lecture, a scolding. Who wants to listen to that? When someone dresses you down, how much do you listen to them? How much do you want to cooperate with them? If they call you names, tell you you’re evil, put words in your mouth… do you really want to listen to what they have to say? Are you going to be receptive to anything they propose? It has nothing to do with guns; that’s just a human reaction.

Here’s a PDF from Dale Carnegie.  Just about every rule gets violated in this “conversation”, and so we’re losing friends and alienating people.

To be fair, it’s not just the anti-gun folk that are like this. I see pro-gun folk that are this way as well. I cannot stand looking at my Twitter feed because I see so much  … well… asshole-ish behavior going on. Conversations in less than 140 characters is not a conversation. I see name-calling, baiting, and just general rudeness. I mean, there’s assholes in every crowd, alas they tend to be the ones creating the most jibber-jabber, thus they create the perception. This sort of behavior won’t win anyone over to our cause. There’s no attempt to educate, just more violations of Dale’s rules. Really, what Mr. Snell’s article concludes cuts both ways: that so long as pro-gun folks treat anti-gun folk in a bad way (denying humanity, maligning their dignity, intelligence and wisdom, etc.), well… they won’t come talk to us either.

We can even step back from guns. Look at abortion, LGBT equality, environment (e.g. global warming), food (GMO, etc.), race, religion (including a-religion), whatever. Ever notice how divisive things are today? How the media no longer maintains a facade of neutrality but now blatantly takes and panders to “sides”? How politicians hammer on “the other side” for being in the way of progress, instead of they themselves trying to progress? How there’s so much spitting of venom and hate? There’s so much talk of tolerance, but little is given, especially to those that don’t agree with me. It doesn’t matter the topic. So long as we deny humanity, malign dignity, shade “the other side” under a cloud of evil… we’ll never come to the table and break bread together.

If united we stand and divided we fall… then it looks like we’ve fallen, and at this rate, we’re not going to get back up. Because while our humanity is crumpled on the ground crying for help, you’d rather Instagram ‘dat shit’ and walk away laughing at the ‘dumb bitch’. We need people to put their smartphones away, give our collective humanity a humble look in the eyes, and offer it a helping hand.

It just doesn’t fly

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

The Hunt Independent School District  (Hunt is about 120 miles west of Austin, in the Texas Hill Country) just approved a measure to allow certain people to carry concealed firearms on HISD grounds.

Naturally, some people object.

“I feel it is a really strong overreaction to what happened at Sandy Hook,” said Clayton Rascoe, parent of a Hunt pre-kindergarten student, referring to the Connecticut elementary where 20 children and six staff members were shot dead in December. “Clearly teachers and staff are not trained to carry firearms and take care of crisis situations,” Rascoe said.

So were Obama, Biden, Bloomberg, Feinstein’s actions not a strong overreaction as well?

Teachers are not trained to take care of crisis situations. What about bullying? What about troubled students? depressed students? There’s all manner of crises that teachers have to deal with. Violence in our schools is nothing new, from the “schoolyard fight”, to now students getting quite aggressive and physically violent with teachers over things like requests to put away mobile phones. Should teachers not be able to handle a crisis?

“There are police and military personnel who train their entire lives for such a situation and they unfortunately get it wrong sometimes,” he said. “I don’t think it is going to solve anything. I think it will introduce more problems than it could ever cure.”

How? What facts and evidence can support your claim? Firearms ownership has risen. Concealed carry has risen. There are more people walking around you today that have guns hidden on their person. And just-released BJS data shows that firearm homicides have decreased. More guns, less firearm homicide. How is this a reduction in violent crime a problem? Is that what you want?

“We teach kids implicitly with everything we do,” he said. “By doing this we are teaching them that violence is a viable solution.”

I hate to say it, Jack, but sometimes violence is not just a viable solution, it’s the only solution. I used to say that to, that violence is not the answer. But now I know that sometimes it is. Oh sure, you cannot make it your only answer, and you must consider if it is the best solution to the given problem. I mean, look at what women’s “rape prevention” seminars are all about — kick him in the groin, palm strike him in the nose, kick, bite, punch. That’s the offered — and socially and culturally acceptable solution — and it looks a lot like violence to me.  Are you saying we shouldn’t teach rape prevention, because that would be teaching violence as a viable solution?

“I own guns. I hunt with guns. I teach my kids to use guns,” he said. “But this is a place of education and safety.”

It should be a place of education and safety. Alas, it is not. Granted, mass shootings are rare and on the decline (despite the media and political hype), so you should look at the mundane. I mean, bullying is pretty common at school. Schoolyard fights happen. A school is no magic bubble that somehow prevents bad things from happening. But I can think of things that can further deter and prevent bad things from happening.

A gun owner himself, Moseley said he didn’t vote for the measure because letting guns in school is not the right answer.

“Teachers are trained to be nurturers, not protectors,” he said.

To nurture is to care for and encourage the growth of development of. If you care for these kids, isn’t their safey important? If you want to see them grow, shouldn’t you want to also ensure they can live to see another day? We put fire alarms, extinguishers, and suppression systems in our schools. We have the kids go through fire drills so they can know precisely how to evacuate the school in the event of a fire. Depending where you live, you might have tornado drills. And the teachers and staff run these drills, maintain the order, and help to deal with the crisis.

Why shouldn’t we enable our teachers — who we entrust with the future of this country — to be able to fully care for their students?

 

More Data – and if the data points this way….

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

A study released Tuesday by the government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics found that gun-related homicides dropped from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. That’s a 39 percent reduction.

Another report by the private Pew Research Center found a similar decline by looking at the rate of gun homicides, which compares the number of killings to the size of the country’s growing population. It found that the number of gun homicides per 100,000 people fell from 7 in 1993 to 3.6 in 2010, a drop of 49 percent.

Both reports also found that non-fatal crimes involving guns were down by roughly 70 percent over that period. The Justice report said the number of such crimes diminished from 1.5 million in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011.

Full story. The Associated Press’ story continues tho:

But perhaps because of the intense publicity generated by recent mass shootings such as the December massacre of 20 school children and six educators in Newtown, Conn., the public seems to have barely noticed the reductions in gun violence, the Pew study shows.

See that’s the thing. Perspective is lacking.

One event happens, the media hype machine gets fired up, and it’s blown out of proportion. I’m not saying what happened in Newtown or any school shooting should be minimized, but rather kept in perspective. I mean, how many people were killed in Chicago this past weekend, and where’s the media hype and outrage over that?

When you look at the BJS’s data, if those homicides are going down folks… why don’t you look at that? I mean, you want gun-based violence to decline, right? Well, we have a decline! Let’s try to see why!

Were guns banned? Were magazine capacities restricted? Nope. In fact if anything, anti-gun folks are going to point out how over the past 10-20 years “gun rights” have expanded, the laws have become too loose, all these states adopting concealed carry laws.

But I thought blood was going to flow in the streets, and we’d return to the Wild West with shootouts over parking spaces? If that happened, wouldn’t gun-related homicide numbers have risen?

Evidently they declined.

I don’t think we can say “expanded gun rights” is the sole cause for this decline, because factors such as the health of the economy, jobs, drugs (e.g. late 1980’s saw a rise due to crack cocaine) certainly come into the equation. But just because it’s not the sole cause doesn’t mean it’s not part of the equation, that it’s not part of the solution.

Look, when it comes to a violent crime you’re likely to be involved in, it’s going to be some criminal wants to get paid. They want what you’ve got: your money, your sexuality, your dignity, whatever… and they will stick a gun in your face to force you to give it up. The criminal wants what they want, and then they want to be able to enjoy what they get, and then be able to do it again. They want to get your wallet, get the money, buy some drugs or booze, consume the drugs or booze, then do it again. Notice that “getting shot or injured or killed” is not part of their equation? Don’t you think empowering Joe Citizen to fight back, to have it be publicly known that the citizenry is armed, that if you mug Joe you may get killed… don’t you think that’s going to have an effect upon reducing crime? If criminal doesn’t want to get shot, he’s going to be more careful or reluctant or just flat out decide to do something else (e.g. just break into a business in the middle of the night to see what he can steal… still not great he committed a crime, but at least people aren’t getting hurt, right?).

Isn’t that what is desired? To reduce the crime? to reduce the violence?

Well, the BJS’s data has shown it’s declined, despite what media hype and politician opinions lead you to believe. So when the facts and data speak, maybe you should listen.

Rangemaster May 2013 Newsletter

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I’m famous now. 🙂

The Rangemaster May 2013 newsletter has been published, and they reprinted my AAR for the Rangemaster Instructor course from a couple months ago (with permission, natch). Thank you, Tom.

But what I want to know is… who wrote that song? 🙂

Well-said

/ hsoi

From Karl Rehn:

Self-defense training is about risk reduction. Those making choices based on Y chromosome-induced testosterone poisoning, rather than logic, reason, and data analysis, deserve whatever problems their stupidity leads them into.

(posted in a FB comment about the SERPA holster).

So what are you teaching our children?

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

They claim that schools are places to teach… for students to learn.

So what lesson is being taught — and consequently learned — from this?

If the story told is facts and truth…

Yes, he brought a shotgun onto school grounds. It was a mistake. The kid’s an Eagle Scout, and he’s human too (i.e. makes mistakes, just like you do, just like school adminstrators do). The moment he realized his mistake he secured the shotgun and went to the school office to try to contend with it (have Mom come pick it up, or some such solution). He was really left with no options, because if he left school grounds that’d be cause for punishment, so what he could he do? He tried to handle it in a responsible manner, but instead he got suspended and turned over to law enforcement.

The school system is standing by their decision.

“Administration reacted promptly and the proper procedures and protocol were followed,” Jones said. “The situation was turned over to law enforcement immediately. As a result of our investigation, it is our best determination that students and staff were safe at all times.”

They were always safe and never in harms way.

But this is what “zero tolerance” policies do. In fact, it’s what policy tends to be about: something to hide behind.

There is no thinking.

There is no consideration.

There is is no accountability because you can just point to the faceless “policy” and wash your hands of everything. Even those that made the policy, if they are still around, aren’t accountable.

It’s bullshit.

Whatever happened to understanding that youth is a period in our lives rife with mistakes? Thus youth should also be a life period rife with learning and forgiveness. But alas, we’re not allowed to make mistakes anymore. What sort of society are we building?

And what lesson is Cole Withrow and the other students supposed to learn? Thinking is bad? Shirking responsibility is what you do as an adult? Because that’s certainly what “school administrative officials” are doing… all because Cole Withrow made a mistake, and sought to do the responsible thing in correcting it.

Mr. Withrow, no matter how this falls out, don’t let the actions of a few unthinking individuals color and tarnish your view of the world. Yes you made a mistake, but you handled it as right and responsibly as you could.

Avoiding Conflict

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Best fights are the ones we avoid.

– Mr. Han (Jackie Chan, the 2010 remake of “The Karate Kid”)

Whenever people dole out self-defense tips, it tends to be under the guise of you being in the fight. The fight has started, or the fight is inevitable, and how can you manage the fight. Granted, sometimes this is how it goes. But what might be better is if we could avoid the fight in the first place.

There are good techniques for this, like SouthNarc’s Managing Unknown Contacts (MUC) techniques, or just following the Insights Training ABC: Always Be Cool. Marc MacYoung knows a lot about the subject too, and when he posted this article I thought it was one worth sharing.

The article is titled “Eight Self-Defense Tips for Men to Avoid Violent Conflicts“. I would argue these are good self-defense tips for everyone to follow, but I can see the author’s point towards men because I get reminded of LowTechCombat‘s examination of Alpha vs. Predatory.

Here are the 8 points, without elaboration (you can find that in the article):

  1. Forget what you see on the screen
  2. Live, love and be happy
  3. Know yourself
  4. He’s human too
  5. Get over yourself
  6. Leave
  7. Peyton Quinn’s rules
  8. Stick to the mission

Notice there’s no tips on how to punch him just right, how to shoot more effectively, none of that. It’s about mindset, it’s about mental approach and tactics for situations — before they become situations. This is more important.

It’s also about humility. There’s so much bravado, so much macho about fighting and self-defense. I recently saw a posting on Facebook, of a picture of a bank holdup scene and captioned basically “and what would you do”. The comment thread was full of big talk, heroics, fantasy, and few posters acknowledged realities involved (tho it was cool to see Rog mention the Beer & TV Maxim; one of the few rational comments on the picture). I think about #8 of “stick to the mission” which is basically:

Every time I leave the house, my mission is to return to it and my loved ones safely and unharmed so I can live a long and happy life with them.

So does your macho, your bravado, your fantasy, your heroics, do they permit you to fulfill your mission? Granted, your mission may be different, but then at least you know your mission. You do clearly know your mission, right? If you don’t, if you cannot stop right now and state it clearly aloud, then perhaps you should take a moment to define what your mission is. It will guide you and your decisions, which may be critically important when the flag flies.

Give the whole article a read. It’s quite good. In fact, most of these tips will apply beyond “violent encounters”. I mean, we have conflict on the job or in other interactions in our daily life. Tips like Peyton Quinn’s rules will help you manage those just fine too.

Evolution

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Paula Bolyard writes:

As I listened to the police scanner during the Boston manhunt, I wasn’t thinking about “police all over the place” in the “personal security guard” sense that Feinstein seemed to be implying.

Instead, I imagined a mother huddled in the nursery with her baby. Her husband is out of town and she is also listening to the police scanner, praying the terrorist doesn’t burst through her back door.

I imagined an 85-year-old World War II veteran living alone. He fought the Nazis on foot across Europe and his government just instructed him to “shelter-in-place.” He turns out the lights in his home and hunches over his radio waiting for updates though the long night.

I wondered if they could protect themselves if the worst happened.

In the middle of that night listening to the Boston police scanner, I evolved.

I realized right then that if I were holed up in my house while a cold-blooded terrorist roamed my neighborhood, I wouldn’t want to be a sitting duck with only a deadbolt lock between me and an armed intruder. There are not enough police and they cannot come to my rescue quickly enough. They carry guns to protect themselves, not me. I knew at that instant if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev showed up at my door while I was “sheltered-in-place” and aimed a gun at my head and only one of us would live, I could pull the trigger.

You can read her complete story here.

Her story resonates with me because I too evolved. I was never against guns and wanting to ban them on the whole, but I didn’t see why anyone needed “a machine gun to hunt Bambi”. Then, Wife was sexually assaulted while taking Oldest (then an infant) out for a walk/push in his stroller. That was my evolutionary moment. It still took me a number of years to come around to owning a gun and carrying a gun, but that moment opened my eyes to many realities about life and the world. That moment set in motion my quest for knowledge, education, and enlightenment about personal safety, crime prevention, etc.. To then own and carry a gun became a logical conclusion, because when you strip away your ignorance, your bias, you emotions and all you have left is fact and harsh realities about the world? Things become pretty clear on their own.

 

Review – Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Back when the book Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun first came out, I was contacted by the author and/or publisher about reviewing it. They would send me a free copy of the book in exchange for a review on my blog. I wasn’t interested. First, I’m not a Glock guy. Second, my blog isn’t a place for pimping and promoting stuff — if I do mention a product or service, it’s because I want to, it’s because I have a personal interest, and generally I spent my own personal money to obtain it. I really don’t want to shill for things because then you can only wonder if my motives are true or if someone’s paying me. I mean, look at most any magazine that promotes some product or lifestyle (it doesn’t matter: guns, fitness, fashion, guitars, home improvement, etc.). Notice they have advertisers all over the pages? Then notice what the magazine must also review? Do you think bad reviews are going to sell ad space? So how honest can those reviews really be?

That said, the Glock book came out in paperback back in January 2013, and they asked me again if I wanted to review.

About a month later I responded and agreed.

I agreed because I decided I wanted to read the book, and if I can get a free copy to read, why not? If the price to pay is a review on my blog, then so be it… because I’m not sure they’ll want me to review things again. 🙂

No, this isn’t a very favorable review. If I am going to review things here, I’m going to give my straight opinion on it, even if that’s saying it sucks. It’s my “no bullshit” rule in life, and I won’t set that aside for anyone.

I didn’t care much for the book.

It took me a couple months to finish reading it. I had other things going on in life and the book was low priority, but it was relegated to the bathroom for reading. So I’d read a few pages here and there, and eventually got through it.

At first, I was very turned off by the book. I was mistaken in my expectations for the book. I thought it was a biography of Gaston Glock. It started off that way, but didn’t keep going that way. It annoyed me because I thought either the author, Paul M. Barrett, was a shitty writer, or that I was duped. But it was just my own misconception, and, frankly, once I realized it was more a “biography” of the Glock gun itself, that made things clearer. Then looking back over the chapters already read, it made more sense. So if you keep that in mind — that it’s a “biography” of the gun itself, it’s not so bad.

And truly, the Glock handgun did a lot to change the face of firearms, police, personal defense, the firearms industry, music, Hollywood, etc.. So I agree that there’s an interesting and compelling story to tell here.

But I didn’t care for the telling of the story.

I guess I’m getting old and tired of drama.

Even as a kid I preferred non-fiction over fiction. Oh sure, some fiction is good and enjoyable. But I remember as a kid in elementary school when every other kid was reading stuff like The Phantom Tollbooth I was checking and rechecking out these books on “how to play chess” from the school library. Even today when people talk about their reading lists and have all this fiction, be it Harry Potter or 50 Shades or whatever, I’m reading books on how to program in Ruby. I’m not a total stick in the mud, but that’s just my preference.

So perhaps that’s why the Glock book turned me off. Sure it had some “just the facts, ma’am” stuff in there, but a lot of the book came off as an attempt to make some sort of “reality TV dramatic thriller” out of the book. All the sex, lies, and dirty politics… and let’s throw in a little more sex and intrigue. A bunch of “he said, she said” anecdotes, etc..  Really, it felt like Barrett was writing with the hopes of making it into a screenplay, or at least a reality TV show.

Maybe that’s the way to write today to appeal to today’s audience? I don’t know. But it just wasn’t my thing. If it’s your thing, great.

I did appreciate getting some level of insight into the Glock gun’s history. I did like reading some of the stories, like Barrett’s time with Mas Ayoob to help gain some experiences for writing the book. But I guess I would have preferred a straight history book instead of a dramatic regaling, at least for this subject matter.

I was also annoyed by the end of the book, since it had advocations of “See? This is how evil guns are, thanks in part to Glock… so we need to increase gun control”. Yeah… not the sort of book or author I’d like to support. So I guess I’m glad I got to read the book for free.

Best I can say is the book was a way to pass the time while sitting on the toilet.