Guns

MidwayUSA – they’re one heck of a business

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

“Hi, I’m Larry Potterfield with MidwayUSA. Thanks for your business.”

Familiar refrain?

I’m a customer of MidwayUSA, because they do have just about everything I need in the realm of gun-related business. While it was evident Larry Potterfield ran a good and growing business, I didn’t realize just how well he strived to run it.

Inc. magazine has an article on MidwayUSA and their quest to be the best-run business in America. (h/t Karl) It’s all about Baldrige.

Give it a read. It’s an interesting peek at how MidwayUSA runs its business. I’d love to work for a company like that; something for me to think about.

Hunting with suppressors in Texas – update

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Texas Park and Wildlife is considering changing the rule to allow hunting game animals with suppressors (silencers, in legal terms). Prior blogging about the proposal here.

The meeting was had, but I haven’t seen anything in particular yet about public comment — no grand announcement. But I went poking around and found this press release.

Regarding the proposed amendment allowing the use of silencers, the department has determined that there is no resource- or enforcement-related reason to prohibit the use of firearm silencers for the take of alligators, game animals or game birds, and therefore proposes to eliminate the current prohibition. The department notes that if the proposal is adopted, it will not relieve any person of the obligation to otherwise comply with any applicable state, federal, or local law governing the possession or use of firearm silencers.

Comments on the proposed rules may be submitted by phone or e-mail to Robert Macdonald (512) 389-4775; e-mail: robert.macdonald@tpwd.state.tx.us, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, 4200 Smith School Road, Austin, Texas 78744.  Comments may also be submitted through the department’s Internet web site and at upcoming public meetings to be scheduled around the state.

I haven’t found anything on the website, but you can email robert.macdonald@tpwd.state.tx.us and express your support.

Keep it short and sweet, polite, professional.

A copy of my email:

Hello Mr. Macdonald.

Pursuant to the press release here:

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/newsmedia/releases/?req=20120130b&nrtype=all&nrspan=2012&nrsearch=

I am writing to comment on the proposed amendment to allow the use of silencers in the taking of alligators, game animals, and game birds.

I am in favor of eliminating the current prohibition.

Sound suppressing devices are useful in the preservation of one’s hearing. As well, suppressors help to reduce recoil. Both of these are advantages to hunters. I think about my children going hunting, and I certainly wish to do all I can to make it a pleasant and life-long endeavor for them. All that can be done to allow them to shoot better — reduction of recoil, reducing loud noise to minimize flinch, preservation of hearing — all serve to provide a better hunting experience, now and throughout their lives. Furthermore, these are advantages that can already be enjoyed by Texas hunters when hunting feral hogs, exotics, or other non-game animals. When it comes down to it, what difference is there between shooting an axis deer with a suppressor and shooting a whitetail deer without one? There’s no logical reason game animals should be excepted.

As a professional firearms instructor, I’m well-aware of the factors involved in shooting: issues of safety, long-term health impacts, and simply how to shoot well. Silencers go a long way towards helping people have a better and healthier shooting experience.

I encourage the department to eliminate the prohibition on the use of silencers in the taking of alligators, game animals, and game birds.

Thank you.

—
John C. Daub
<my email address> <my blog address>
NRA Patron Life Member
TSRA Life Member
NRA Certified Instructor
TX CHL Certified Instructor

Maybe I’ll switch to Gold Dot…

/ hsoi / 9 Comments

When I started carrying my snub revolver, I spent some time trying to find out the best ammo for it. I performed some of my own research and trials, additional observations, and this was probably my last entry on the topic for some time.

Downrange.tv has an article discussing the Speer Gold Dot. I like Gold Dots. My “social” ammo is Gold Dot 9mm 124 grain +P which has a proven track record. It’s solid stuff.

What caught my eye in the DRTV article was this paragraph:

The issue load for NYPD officers carrying a .38 Special revolver is the Speer 135 grain +P Gold Dot hollow point. This load was developed by Speer at the request of the NYPD to mimic the excellent performance the NYPD has experienced with their 9mm duty load, the 124 grain +P Gold Dot HP.

I didn’t know that the .38 load was 1. made the request of NYPD, 2. that it was developed to mimic the performance of the 9mm 124 grain +P load.

Interesting.

Now note!  There are actually 2 Speer .38 Special +P loads: one has a 125 grain bullet, the other a 135 grain bullet. What we want here is the 135 grain version, which is made for “short barrels” (GDHP-SB).

When I was doing my own trials, I really wanted to go with the Gold Dots. However, data was showing that it didn’t have quite the peformance of a couple other loads, specifically the Remington R38S12 (.38 Special 158 grain +P LSWCHP, the fabled “FBI load”) and the Buffalo Bore 20C/20 (.38 Special standard pressure 158 grain soft lead semi-wadcutter). But you know… I just hate carrying lead bullets because… it’s lead! So I’ve always used either the R38S12 or the Buffalo Bore, but I always hated it because of the exposed lead. I wished the Gold Dot was a better performer.

But you know what’s changing my mind? All the tests and data I looked at was “contrived”. That is, it’s not real-world application. Ballistics gel is useful because it provides a close-enough medium that is consistent so we can have some sort of “apples to apples” comparison of load performance. And while it provides useful data, it doesn’t necessarily correlate to the real world. But if there’s such real-world data as 35,000 NYPD cops carrying that particular load and having real-world success with it well… that says something.

So yeah… maybe I’ll be switching my snub load to Gold Dot.

Who needs to be armed in a National Park?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Who needs to be armed in a National Park?

Well, it was a good thing this 6-year-old’s father was. (h/t sshbiker)

A family was walking in Big Bend National Park when a mountain lion snuck up and pounced on the 6-year-old boy. Clamped down on his face. The father stabbed the mountain lion in the chest with his pocket knife and that caused the predator to break off the attack and run.

It’s rare that a mountain lion attacks a human, but a 6-year-old looks like food that won’t put up much of a fight (vs. a large man). With the drought and rough conditions here in Texas, critters are going further and taking more chances in their quest for food. The coyotes have been coming much closer to my house lately, and yes that concerns me.

Wild animals are just that: wild animals. To them, you are not a person, you are either something to be left alone, or prey. In fact, it really doesn’t matter if the predator has 2 legs or 4 legs, you are either something to be left alone, or prey. Being attacked may be rare, but when it happens what are you going to do to respond? Are you going to just panic and scream? Or are you going to be able to fight and win?

Good job, Dad.

It rubbed me the wrong way.

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Last night I read this article in the LA Times (h/t The Gun Wire) regarding Virginia working to repeal their “1 gun a month” restriction.

Some statements in it just rubbed me the wrong way.

Supporters of the bill, who included most of the Legislature’s Republicans as well as some Democrats from rural areas,

Some implied stereotyping?

“Virginia has had more than its share of horrific tragedies perpetrated by criminals with easy access to firearms,” said Lori Haas, whose daughter Emily was one of 25 people injured in the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, which killed 35. “It’s a sad day when our legislators purposely make it easier for gun traffickers to do their dirty business.”

They aren’t making it easier for criminals to be criminals. They’re making it easier for law-abiding citizens. For you see, criminals, by definition, don’t obey the law. They’re already trafficking high numbers of guns and the change of this law doesn’t affect them. It does change things for the law-abiding, and allows them to buy more freely.

We don’t restrict people to buying one car a month, one knife a month, one bottle of alcohol a month. Heck, we have giant warehouse stores dedicated to people who wish to buy in huge quantities. What with drunk driving, what with obesity, why don’t we start limiting what else people can buy? Because these things can kill people too. The logic doesn’t stand.

I am convinced that this law had a significant impact in reducing gunrunning,” [Richard Cullen, a Republican and a former U.S. attorney in Virginia] said

Data please.

But the choice quote was the last one… and of course, positioning it as the last one was intentional on the part of the LA Times writer, so it’s the tone and impression the reader leaves the article with:

Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, a Democrat who opposes the bill, said allowing people to buy more than one handgun a month wouldn’t make Virginia any safer. Anyone who had bought a handgun a month under the current law would have amassed 240 guns during the law’s 20-year span.

If you need more than 240 handguns, then I would submit something’s wrong with you,” he said. “Something’s gone wrong in your life.”

It may not make Virginia any safer, but where will it make Virginia any more dangerous?

Just because someone CAN buy more than 1 a month doesn’t mean someone HAS to or will buy more than one a month, every month. Perhaps I win an elk hunting trip in Colorado but I don’t have a rifle suitable. I might want to buy 2 at one time so I can have a rifle and a backup. I’ve had a rifle fail on me in the field (well, the scope did) and I was happy to have a backup rifle. Why should it take me 2 months to make these purchases?

And if I want more than 240 handguns, why does that equate to a problem in my life? People have hobbies and collect large amounts of things all the time. Someone with less than 240 stamps or baseball cards or comic books doesn’t have much of a collection. But hey, thank you for your assumptions… I guess we can’t all be like you. Even if something has gone wrong in your life, is that any reason to deny a person?

Guns thwart crime, save lives — and we have data

/ hsoi

In fact… the data we have, refutes many commonly held misconceptions (that never had any data behind them anyways) about guns and their use.

In a new Cato Institute paper, Clayton Cramer and David Burnett review the controversy over how often Americans use guns in self-defense each year.

[…]

The most common situation, accounting for 1,227 of 4,669 incidents, was a “home invasion,” where intruders try to force their way into a home they know to be occupied. Burglaries were also common, accounting for 488 incidents. In 285 cases, the defender had a concealed carry permit, and most of those incidents occurred in public. There were very few cases where a permit holder became involved in an avoidable dispute that turned deadly because he had a gun—a scenario that figures prominently in arguments against nondiscretionary permit laws. Also contrary to the warnings of gun controllers, victims in this sample were rarely disarmed by their attackers; the reverse happened more than 20 times as often. Criminals took away defenders’ guns in 11 out of 4,669 incidents, and the defender ended up dead despite being armed in 36 incidents, less than 1 percent of the time. Cramer and Burnett describe many specific cases (mapped by Cato here) in which a gun prevented robbery, rape, serious injury, or death, illustrating their general point that policy makers need to take these benefits into account instead of focusing exclusively on criminal uses.

Full article at Reason

The Cato paper. Yes, you can download it for free.

And a nifty interactive map at Cato mapping out defensive gun use.

Remember, I wasn’t always a gun owner. I didn’t see the point of “assault rifles” because it wasn’t like Bambi wore a bullet-proof vest. I thought the police were there to “protect and serve” and they’d always be there to prevent my wife from being sexually assaulted….

But when you finally decide to look at facts, evidence, data, listen to reasoned arguments, well… it’s hard to refute Truth. You can keep your fingers in your ears and your hands over your eyes if you wish, but that only serves to keep you from realizing Truth. Your choice, I suppose.

KR Training January 2012 Newsletter

/ hsoi

The KR Training January 2012 Newsletter is now available.

Biggest thing? Folks, if you’re wanting to do any training you should sign up as soon as possible. We’ve got things scheduled out through May, and classes have been filling up VERY quickly. Plan ahead, get signed up as soon as possible.

 

The Importance of the First Shot

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

The NSSF‘s January 2012 edition of “Pull The Trigger” features a video by champion pistol shooter Doug Koenig on “The All-Important First Shot”

This is true. There’s no more important shot than your first shot. If you need another tenth of a second to ensure a good hit? Take that tenth of a second. As the old say goes, “you can’t miss fast enough”. Or as I prefer to say, you can’t afford unacceptable hits; slow down and get acceptable hits. Accept nothing else.

Tom Givens made me realize there’s more than one first shot. We tend to consider the “first shot” to be the shot fired at the start of the string, or the initial shot fired after we walked up to the firing line. But realize any shot other than an immediately subsequent shot is a first shot. So you draw and shoot? That’s a first shot. While shooting there’s a malfunction that you have to clear; when you come back on target, that’s also a first shot. It’s also a first shot when you come back up after performing a reload.

What’s the most important shot? The first shot.

What’s shot you’re most likely to screw up? The first shot.

The screw up will tend to happen because we’ll get in a hurry. This will be most evident on “subsquent first shots”, like after a reload or malfunction. We know we’re down, we need to get back to business quickly, and so we’ll rush and blow the first shot. You must make a conscious decision to slow down. It doesn’t mean move at a glacial pace, but if you have to take 0.2 seconds to verify a sight picture and ensure a smooth trigger press, then do so. Again, we don’t want unacceptable hits.

An acceptable first shot is of paramount importance in a self-defense context. That first shot may be the one that saves your life. Yes it must be fast, but more so it must be accurate. Do the math. On paper, taking that extra 0.2 seconds to ensure an acceptable hit may seem like too much time — every millisecond matters, right? But what if you didn’t take that 0.2 seconds and had an unacceptable hit? Now you’ll have to shoot again, and that will take more time. In making that second shot, your shooting scenario may have changed (e.g. bad guy moved because they realized incoming lead has the right-of-way) which forces your OODA loop to reset and now you take even more time to get re-situated and get that second shot off. And what of the first unacceptable hit? if it hit grandma, that’s going to be far more costly than the 0.2 seconds.

Yes speed matters, but speed without accuracy is worthless. You should shoot (only) as fast as you can get acceptable hits. In practice, use a timer and find out how fast you actually can shoot to get acceptable hits. Take a drill, any drill (KR Training’s “3 Seconds or Less” is a good one). Or since we’re talking first shots, just start with the gun in the holster, concealment garment if applicable, and work on the drawing and firing off a single shot. Shoot it with no timer, no par times, just shoot it at your own pace that enables you to get a clean 100% score. Make sure you can repeat that clean performance on-demand. The next step is to use a timer to for a starting beep and to record shot times, but no ending “par time” beep — leave it open-ended. You want a starting tone, and by recording your shots you can look at the last time and see how long it took you to shoot that string/drill. You want to see how long it takes you to cleanly shoot the string/drill, but with no time pressures. This will establish your “shooting it cleanly” par time. Once you have that established, now you can put a stop tone/par time on the timer and work to shoot the drill before the closing buzzer. Then next time, drop the par time by some amount, maybe 0.2 seconds. Try again. Incrementally lowering the par time, pushing yourself a little more until you can be faster AND accurate.

Your first shot is your most important shot. Make it count.

Why you don’t mess with old people

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However, before [the wanted fugitive] could climb the fence, Willis came face-to-face with [the 64-year-old] Granville, who pointed a gun right at his face and said, “Don’t you move mother f*****, I will shoot you! I will shoot you where you stand!”

For a mother who loves John Wayne and has a concealed weapon’s license, that was her moment.

“He says, ‘Please don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot me.’ I says, ‘Don’t you move, you’re moving.’ I said, ‘Don’t you move.’ Then, he put his hands behind his head. I says, ‘You’re moving!” Granville described.

Granville said she didn’t know if Willis had a weapon, so she kept her gun trained on him until deputies arrived.

Just awesome. Full story.

The sad part tho is the reality of why she felt the need to arm herself in the first place.

Granville said she’s been shooting guns her entire life, but it was previous drug deals and a murder on her street that motivated her to arm herself to keep her family safe.

“They’ll shoot you, they’ll break in. They’ll get whatever they want, and I says it’s not going to happen to me because I will shoot them,” Granville said.

But at least she accepts the reality of her situation and is willing to do something about it herself, instead of delegating the responsibility for her  safety to someone else (and then being surprised and angry when reality demonstrates they can’t save her).