Saw this posted on TacticalGunReview‘s Facebook page:
We are giving away a Leupold Tactical Patrol 3-9×40 illuminated TMR reticle scope! Post your review on TacticalGunReview.com for your chance to win this incredible prize!!
Given my experience with the Leupold VX-R 3-9×50 on my hunting rifle? I’d say this is a great prize.
Go write reviews and enter!
AAC has a nice little video demonstrating the benefits of suppressors (silencers):
See? It makes things quiet.
This is A Good Thing™.
For those of you that aren’t into guns, here’s some perspective.
Remember the last time some guy on a LOUD Harley passed you on the road? About rattled your fillings loose, didn’t it? You know why it’s that loud? Because he didn’t have a muffler on his exhaust. You likely take it for granted that almost every vehicle on the road has a muffler on their exhaust, else we’d all be blaring down the road making such a racket. Think about all that noise, and the silence a muffler brings.
A silencer is merely a muffler for a gun.
If we think mufflers are good things for cars, why are mufflers for guns a bad thing? Sure some people like loud things, but on the whole humans tend to not like loud — we’re not built for it, else loud noises wouldn’t cause hearing damage.
Yes, Hollywood has made us think that silencers are tools of assassins and make guns silent… or that they all make that one “thwip” sound (see Coconut Effect). Hardly the case, as the video demonstrates.
Some say it’s important to deny suppressors because poachers will use them. Well, it’s not like a bow and arrow make tons of noise. Furthermore, many countries around the world consider it bad form to hunt WITHOUT a suppressor because it’s rude to make so much noise.
So someone please explain to me why silencers are illegal in some parts of the US and highly regulated everywhere else? What is gained, other than keeping a lot of bureaucrats in a job processing tons of paperwork?
Yes, I’ve thought about getting a suppressor for a while now. Trouble has been what to get, not brand, but caliber. I think I’m settling on a .30 cal suppressor, and then looking at a rifle (perhaps SBR, as long as I have to deal with paperwork) in something like .300 AAC Blackout. Why? Because I can. Use? Probably hog hunting, and perhaps even exotics (e.g. fallow, sika, axis, red, blackbuck, etc.) since my reading of the TX P&W game rules is that you can’t use suppressors on game animals and exotics aren’t game animals, they’re exotics. Save my hearing while out in the field, a good thing.
I need your input (read on).
It’s finally getting cold in Central Texas.
Some consider a change in the weather a time to change what gun you carry. For instance, in the summer they’ll carry a J-frame, in the winter a 1911. The general reason given is amount of clothing: summer, less clothing, harder to conceal bigger guns; winter, more clothing, easier to conceal bigger guns. Well… it gets wicked hot here, I don’t wear parkas in the summer, yet I still conceal a full-sized gun. But, everyone’s body and needs are different, so YMMV.
Me? I’d rather change my clothing than my gun — I don’t need to build proficiency with clothing. Nevertheless, come colder days, I need to wear more clothing. More clothing worn means more clothing to have to get through should I need to draw my gun. It hit me a couple weeks ago while getting ready for church, one of the first times having to don long/warm dress clothing. Because of my weightlifting, I’m building more muscle mass, clothing isn’t fitting me the same, wardrobe options are reduced until I can go shopping. I was reduced to wearing my gun inside the waistband (typical) but I then had to tuck in my shirt. I have come to not like tucking-in my shirt because it makes the gun harder to get to, because it’s harder to get the clothing out of the way. I also filled out the shirt more, which pushed me to print a bit more, so I wore a jacket. Even more clothing to have to get through. *sigh*
But… I thought… Jackets. Sport Coat. Blazer. Hrm. Why not do that in the winter? I could wear OWB with a jacket over it. Concealed, warm, accessible. A bit of a fashion change for me, but Wife thought I’d look handsome and well… there’s the clincher. 🙂
So, I’m going to do some experimenting with OWB, jackets, and wearing the gun slightly differently. While yes it’s eyed towards winter situations, I will keep in mind summer options. Who knows, maybe I’ll go OWB in summer too.
Note: the only time I wear OWB is at the range, and there options and issues are different. But even in that case, it’s often that I’m wearing my IWB holster and merely tuck in my shirt behind the gun. So I have little “on the street” experience with OWB carry.
Thus, I start to get back to the same old “first time carry” fears of being exposed, freaking someone out because they see the gun, and so on. The main concern? The muzzle. I’d like to find a holster with a good high ride.
Tom Hogel (friend, fellow KR Training Instructor) showed me C. Rusty Sherrick’s “US High Ride” holster; he has one for his J-frame. It’s a very high ride, putting the muzzle flush with the bottom edge of the belt. I really like that in terms of improved concealablity. When I tried it with a J-frame it felt alright, but I’m not sure with a slab-side double-stack semi-auto if that may stick things too high in my ribs and be annoying all day long. I’ll probably just have to order one and see.
Tom was also kind enough to lend me his Raven holster to try for a while. I’ve been wearing it for almost a week now and have some first impressions. First, it’s a HUGE slab of Kydex. I think that bodes well in many respects for the holster, but it doesn’t negate the fact it’s a HUGE slab of Kydex. It gets in the way of both my front and rear pants pockets, which I do keep things in and need to have access to on occasion. Wearing the holster slightly forward with the leading edge of the holster truly just behind my hip bone, it makes for an excellent draw position, but the “muzzle area” of the holster really digs into my leg and becomes quite uncomfortable. If I then move the holster back some so it’s comfortable to wear, there’s no way it conceals my gun — the butt sticks out like well, a big butt. 🙂 Interestingly, Tom says he has this issue too with the XDm but not with his M&P. I do like how close the Raven wears to the body, not as close and tight as an IWB holster, but pretty good. I’m going to keep wearing the Raven for a little while longer to see how it goes, but so far my impressions are this is a great holster but it’s not going to work for me.
Some time ago I had purchaed a Comp-Tac Settable Cant Holster. I bought it for gaming, and there it must remain. I had the paddle attachment on it for ease of suiting up at the range, and I already knew that held the gun well away from the body, such that concealing was not an option. But I tried switching to the belt attachment to see how it would fare. It holds closer to the body, but nowhere near close enough for concealment, certainly not as close as the Raven does. So, this holster will go back to the paddle attachment and continue to be a range/gaming holster. I do wonder about Comp-Tac’s Belt Holster since the pictures look like it holds tighter AND by saying it’s IDPA legal I reckon it probably conceals better than the Settable Cant Holster.
Karl suggested the Blade-Tech Eclipse, and that’s a lot less Kydex, but it appears to hang just as low as the MTAC. Not sure that’s what I want.
Hrm. I wonder if Tucker Gunleather’s “First Strike Kydex” will work.
I’ve also looked at High Noon Holster’s and they look like they might provide a high enough ride, but I think the pictures appear that way because they’re using short-barrelled guns. Still, I might pick up one of their “cheap line” versions (e.g. Skin Guard) to see if it works out and truly if it does work out, I’d get the holster again in their custom line (e.g. “Slide Guard”).
Then there’s Kramer Handgun Leather, which the Insights guys are high on. I’ve even had thoughts about changing my IWB holster because while the MTAC is alright, it’s a big slab of leather (I seem to have a thing against large slabs, eh?) and I’ve wondered if something like Kramer’s #2 or #3 IWB might serve me better.
I must admit….
After my initial digging around and trials, I’m getting a little discouraged, but I may just have unrealistic expectations.
Do you have any suggestions of holster makers? I know there are a lot out there, but it’s often hard to find little shops without someone pointing you to them.
Many concepts in life are universal. We might learn them in one context, and when we remove the specifics of that context, we’ll find the concept applies to almost anything in life. While writing the last observations post, although it was about guns and shooting, some words from powerlifter Jim Wendler came to mind.
I wrote of how I felt some students would be well-served to step back to a beginners/fundamentals class before progressing further. I mentioned how that sort of thing is hard, because it’s a blow to the ego. Jim writes about “starting too light”:
My coaches emphasized this to me when I was in high school, but unfortunately, I didn’t listen. Hopefully you will. Starting too light allows for more time for you to progress forward. It’s easy for anyone – beginner or advanced – to want to get ahead of themselves. Your lifts will go up for a few months, but then they’ll stall – and stall, and stall some more. Lifters get frustrated and don’t understand that the way around this is to prolong the time it takes to get to the goal. You have to keep inching forward. This is a very hard pill to swallow for most lifters. They want to start heavy, and they want to start now. This is nothing more than ego, and nothing will destroy a lifter faster, or for longer, than ego.
Forget that he’s talking about weightlifting. He’s talking about keeping your ego in check. Start lower than you think, start lighter than you think. Maybe you think you’re the best shooter around, but you’d still be served well to take the school’s intro class — even if it’s well below your perception of your skills, there’s something to be learned. If you try to jump in at too high a level, that’s just ego and will ultimately destroy you.
I wrote:
Sometimes improvement requires taking a step back and regressing down the ladder a bit, but only so you can make your foundation more solid. To expand upon that metaphor, if you realized your ladder was planted in sand, how high do you think you could climb? But if you started up the ladder, realized things were getting shaky, then climbed back down, poured some concrete around the legs, then climbed back up, how much higher do you think you could now climb? Don’t be afraid to back down and pour concrete.
To bring it over to lifting, a hallmark of a good program is progressive/incremental resistance: the program always strives to add more weight, more reps. If you look at the Wendler 5/3/1 program, it’s divided into 4 week cycles. When the next cycle starts, you increase your weights by a certain amount (e.g. 5# on bench press) and continue along. While a 5# jump on your bench press every 4 weeks doesn’t sound like much, over the course of a year that can mean a 60# increase, which is significant!
The reality of lifting, however, is that the linear progression will not always happen — you will stall. What’s the solution? Back down. There are numerous ways to calculate this. One thing Jim writes:
You’ll eventually come to a point where you can’t make any more progress on a lift. You won’t be able to hit the sets and reps you’re supposed to hit, and the weights will start to get too heavy. When this happens, I simply take 90% of my max (either a 1RM or a rep max) and start all over again.
[…]
If you’re really starting out with 10% less than your actual maxes, you can expect to go through 5-7 cycles at a minimum before you stall out. I’ve gone through 8 before having to back off.
You see, it’s actually expected that you’ll stall, that you’ll have to back off. You don’t have to back off far, just “90%” of what you were doing, but paring yourself back just that slight bit helps you make longer term progress. If you allow your ego to remain in control, you’ll only try to forge ahead, will eventually hit a wall, you’ll never get over the wall, and ultimately you’ll fail to achieve your goals. If however you back off, if you go “beneath your skills” and maybe take a beginner class (again), you’ll come out of it stronger and able to progress further.
And so, the same with shooting. Back down. If you get to an intermediate-level class and find yourself struggling, take the class again, or maybe take the previous class in the curriculum progression and reestablish some fundamentals. Ultimately this will allow you to progress longer and ultimately reach higher goals and loftier heights. If you continue to be ego-driven, you won’t achieve your goals. Taking 2 steps back so you can take 5 steps forward only helps you in the long run.
It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about shooting, or weightlifting, or anything else in life. The principles are universal. Keep your ego in check, be honest with yourself. Never be afraid to take a few steps back if that means over the long term you’ll progress further.
This past Saturday marked the end of the 2011 season @ KR Training, with a Basic Pistol 2 and Defensive Pistol Skills 1 set of classes.
For some reason the class enrollment rolled up and down — maybe because of the predicted bad weather? It was predicted to be very cold, a polar wind, and a lot of rain. Granted, not ideal circumstances to be out in, but one can argue that if you’re out to learn about defensive skills, you should sometimes shoot in less than ideal circumstances because it’s not like bad things only happen in good weather. Nevertheless, while it was raining in Austin, it was dry out at the A-Zone range; in fact, it was an amazingly pleasant and nice day out there. Y’all missed out. 🙂
We had a few extra hands helping out, so between that and people bailing, the teacher-student ratio was very beneficial to the students with a lot of personal attention.
Basic Pistol 2 went pretty well, and the students shot above average for a BP2 class. Remember: we train you to a higher standard, and you should always strive to train to a higher standard. That B-27 target is huge. When you go to the range to practice or when you dry practice at home, use a 6″ paper plate as your target. Aim small, miss small. Then when the pressure is on, such as when you take your CHL test, you’ll perform better.
Defensive Pistol Skills 1 I don’t think went as well. A couple of things stood out to me.
First, I’d say a fair portion of the class lacked solid shooting fundamentals: grip, stance, trigger control. DPS1 is not a class where we can fix such things. Yes, we try to point out and remedy such things where we can, but there just isn’t time nor focus for those topics. You can’t expect to build a house on a poor foundation. If you can’t take a reliable and repeatable grip that you can maintain throughout a string of shots, if you don’t know how to best work the trigger (not slapping/yanking; resetting the trigger between shots), you may be able to manage but it’s going to be difficult for you to excel. Remember, when the flag flies you’re going to do about 70% of your worse day at the range — if your performance will be that bad when it matters most, it means you need your average performance during practice needs to be very very high. The right way to achieve high performance is to start building upon a solid foundation of proper fundamentals.
This may be difficult for some folks to hear because I know — it’s a direct blow to the ego. We all think our gun handling is great… but hopefully some of you realized during class that no, your gun handling isn’t that great. By no means is this any attempt to embarrass or degrade or make anyone feel bad about things. Far from it! What we want is for you to have an honest assessment and awareness of your skills. The fact you chose to come to class means you accept you have something to learn, so that’s great — you are open to improvement. Sometimes improvement requires taking a step back and regressing down the ladder a bit, but only so you can make your foundation more solid. To expand upon that metaphor, if you realized your ladder was planted in sand, how high do you think you could climb? But if you started up the ladder, realized things were getting shaky, then climbed back down, poured some concrete around the legs, then climbed back up, how much higher do you think you could now climb? Don’t be afraid to back down and pour concrete.
So to that end, if you realize your fundamentals aren’t where they should be, please come back and see us for a class like Basic Pistol 2. That’s a class where we have the time and focus on fundamentals, to help you “pour some concrete” and establish a better foundation.
Second, mindset. Defensive Pistol Skills 1 is really “Gunfighting 101”. This is a class that’s introducing you to the concept of using a gun to help you stay alive in a violent confrontation: a mugging, assault, etc.. You have to take the class with that in mind. When we yell “GUN” and expect you to take a big step to your right before you draw, we want you to move as if there’s a fire under your butt… because there is! You shouldn’t be casually sauntering to your right and mellowly pulling out your gun, getting your hits just after the par-timer beeps to say the string is over. Yes this is still a square range, yes that cardboard target isn’t actually attacking you. I know it’s hard to make the mental leap — but you have to try. When it’s time to perform, you’ll perform like you practiced. Practice like your life is on the line, and you’ll perform like your life is on the line.
Granted, this is a “101” class and thus an introduction. I don’t actually expect people to perform to that standard because they don’t know yet to perform to that standard. Well, now you’re on notice. 🙂
Some things to help:
California (that kinda says it all right there) starts to enforce a sales tax on guns purchased out of state. (h/t NRANews)
Granted, it’s a law that’s been on the books since 1935, but that’s not the gripe. It’s the logic behind the tax:
Buying a gun online is usually a cheaper option and until now, those buyers did not have to pay a tax. But,the state says that tax actually helps local retailers by evening the playing field, saying
“The use tax is intended to protect California sellers who otherwise would be at a competitive disadvantage when out-of-state sellers make sales of goods to California customers without charging tax.”
It’s all about evening the playing field.
So, tax everyone.
You know, removing the tax would even the playing field too. Funny how that option is never considered (by the folks that couldn’t survive without taxes).
Proponents of gun control say that it makes our streets and cities safer.
That we need to pass more laws to ban guns because that will keep guns out of the hands of criminals.
That we need to ban gun shows because that’s where gangs and cartels get their weaponry (not from the ATF, natch).
Hogwash.
Show me data to support this.
I can show you data that refutes it.
Here’s some summary text of a 5-year FBI study into violent criminal attacks on police officers titled, “Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation’s Law Enforcement Officers.” From a pool of more than 800 incidents, the researchers selected 40, involving 43 offenders (13 of them admitted gangbangers-drug traffickers) and 50 officers, for in-depth exploration. They visited crime scenes and extensively interviewed surviving officers and attackers alike, most of the latter in prison.
Predominately handguns were used in the assaults on officers and all but one were obtained illegally, usually in street transactions or in thefts. In contrast to media myth, none of the firearms in the study was obtained from gun shows. What was available “was the overriding factor in weapon choice,” the report says. Only 1 offender hand-picked a particular gun “because he felt it would do the most damage to a human being.”
Researcher Davis, in a presentation and discussion for the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, noted that none of the attackers interviewed was “hindered by any law–federal, state or local–that has ever been established to prevent gun ownership. They just laughed at gun laws.”
Emphasis added.
It’s funny… you know… they’re called criminals, and by definition that means they don’t obey the law. What in the world makes you think that passing laws to ban X is going to stop X? That criminals are going to care one iota about laws getting in their way?
All you’re doing is hurting good, law-abiding people.
Either you’re ignorant, or you’ve got ulterior motives.
If you’re ignorant (hey, I was too at one time), be willing to shed your ignorance and gain enlightenment. It’s not a bad thing.
If you’ve got ulterior motives, well….
Robb Allen links to an anecdote about how open carry may well have prevented a crime. Robb’s comment section has a few other “OC success” stories.
But you see, this is the problem with open carry:
Officer 1: They were definately going to hit the place. However since no crime was actually committed, the best we can do is look for them and see if we hit anything when we pull them over. You guys did great.
No crime committed. Thus, there will be no crime report, no papers to file, no statistics to pile up.
The naysayers and anti-gunners will say there’s no proof that guns stop crimes. To some extent, they are right because we can only get crime data when crimes are committed, reported, and statistics are then compiled from those reports.
There are no reams of reports when a crime is stopped before it ever has a chance to start. When there are less reports and “crime goes down”, it’s difficult to directly attribute that to more private citizens being armed and ready to defend themselves.
So alas… one problem with open carry is it just can’t generate statistics. All we can have is a growing pile of anecdotes, and the pile is growing.
But that’s fine. Less crime also creates fewer statistics. I’m fine with that problem.
The KR Training November 2011 Newsletter is up.
Not only is the schedule from now through Spring 2012 up — with great classes like “Dynamic First Aid”, the return of Tom Givens, NRA Instructor certification classes, and a host of the KRT curriculum — but there’s a great section from Karl about “why we teach what we teach”.
I knew USCCA had published the KR Training “Three Seconds or Less” drill in their magazine, but I only just realized they also put it on their website.
It’s a great drill based around the oft quoted statistic that the average gunfight is “3 shots, in 3 seconds, at 3 yards”. While many say we shouldn’t train to averages, if you cannot perform to that average I’d say you should seek some professional instruction and further practice.
It’s a simple drill to run since the timer never has to be adjusted (3 seconds throughout), only 20 rounds, and it puts you through a basic battery of skills for defensive pistol use.
Go try!
Stuff From Hsoi 