Guns

Another Saturday at the range

/ hsoi

Spent this past Saturday at KR Training helping with the Basic Pistol 1 and Beyond the Basics: Handgun classes.

Just realized I forgot to write up some things about the classes. 🙂

Basic Pistol 1

60% of the class was women. More and more women are interested in personal defense, and that’s A Good Thing™.

If you were in that class, I would like to suggest you come back for Basic Pistol 2. While BP1’s intent is to introduce firearms (safety, basic shooting technique, try lots of guns to see what they’re like) so you can make more informed choices at the gun store or at the rental range, it really isn’t able to teach enough of the fundamentals of shooting. That’s really where BP2 comes in, and just based on a few things we saw consistently in the class, BP2 would be useful for many of the students in that class.

Beyond The Basics: Handgun

This is not a high-speed-low-drag course. It’s not a defensive skills course. It’s a class designed to improve marksmanship, to improve fundamentals of sights and trigger, but especially “what you see”. Most people shoot in a manner where they always strive for that perfect sight picture on every shot, but you must realize that sort of sight picture isn’t always necessary. When targets are large and/or close, you can get away with seeing a lot less and having a less and ideal sight picture. When targets are small and/or far away, you generally need a closer-to-ideal sight picture. You can shoot those larger/closer targets faster, you need to shoot the smaller/further targets slower, to still get acceptable hits. And so, this class works on those skills, which are useful no matter what your shooting arena (defensive, action sports, etc.).

I’d like to refer students to a few things:

100 Round Practice. Print that up, take it to the range with you. You’ll get far more out of doing this than if you just go and throw 100 rounds downrange.

Wall Drill.  This is a great dry-fire exercise to help you work on trigger control.

Group shooting. Shooting groups isn’t always fun, but it is challenging and will help you with your trigger control, sights, and follow through. The 100 Round Practice starts and ends with group shooting, and there’s good reason for that setup. Start shooting groups at 3 yards (no timer). Try 5 yards, 7 yards, 10, 15, 25. Don’t push yourself too hard too fast else you’ll just wind up frustrated and won’t progress. Just take whatever your comfort level is and go a step beyond that. If you’re shooting really tight groups at 3 yards, try moving to 7 yards. Or perhaps try shooting 3 yard groups but slightly faster yet striving to keep the group size the same (or smaller!).

Ball and Dummy. While you do your group shooting, mix a dummy round in there, to keep you honest. 🙂

F.A.S.T. test. You don’t have to shoot this drill as-is, merely use the target. Or, just use something like an index card and a large paper plate. The intent is to have multiple targets of different size. Shoot the circle then the rectangle. Shoot the rectangle then the circle. Shoot 1 and 1. Shoot 2 then 1. Shoot 3 then 2.  It’s about transitioning, not just your eyes and gun from one target to another, but learning to manage your sight picture, how much (or little) you need to see, and the speed/cadence of your shooting. You can do this in dry practice too; won’t be quite the same as live fire since recoil management does enter into the equation, but you can still work it dry and gain some benefit.

Whatever you choose, don’t just go to the range and throw lead without any point. Sure, sometimes just going and shooting because it’s fun is the whole point and that’s fine. But if you wish to progress, you’ll need a plan to get there.

DR Performance Practice Deck for iOS Now Available

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DR PERFORMANCE PRACTICE DECK FOR iOS NOW AVAILABLE

The New Digital Way to Practice for Practical Shooting Sports

DR Performance Practice Deck for iOS iconAUSTIN, TX (October 4, 2011) — To help answer the question “What should I practice?”, DR Performance Shooting andHsoi Enterprises LLC announce the availability of the DR Performance Practice Deck for iOS™. Consisting of 52 basic shooting drills superimposed on a normal deck of playing cards, the deck allows you to have a thorough, fun, and effective practice session, now conveniently available on your Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.

For complete information, visit the Hsoi Enterprises blog.

This is what I’ve been working on for the past some months and it’s finally here.

Please share and spread the word! Thank you!

Violence in Church

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The Highlander and Kurgan may have respected holy ground, but criminals do not.

Recently, Rangemaster instructors Tom Givens, Cecil Booker, and Steve Palmer attended a full day seminar for church security teams from around the country. There were some very interesting blocks of instruction from various law enforcement and church organizations.

One of the points that really stood out was how little public awareness exists of this problem. As one of the pastors of a large church stated, many churches refuse to report crimes against them, or try hard to keep them quiet for fear of scaring the members from attending services and other church functions. Despite this, reported serious incidents at churches have increased by 200% in just the past five years.

According to a spokesman from the Sheriff’s Department’s Homeland Security office, since January 1999 there have been 473 major incidents in US churches, resulting in over 200 fatalities. These range from mentally ill persons assaulting or killing pastors to religion-based hate crimes. Robbery accounted for 27% of the serious incidents, since churches are known to have cash on hand, especially during services. In those 473 incidents, 596 people were killed or seriously injured.

This serves as a reminder that violence can occur wherever there are people. Thinking one is “safe” just because one is in a house of worship is naïve. You are safe where you make yourself safe, and nowhere else. Discretely conceal your personal emergency safety equipment and have it on you at all times. That is really the only way to actually have it when the need suddenly arises.

From the October 2011 Rangemaster Newsletter.

New belt

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I’m not Batman, but I do carry a lot of things on my belt. Every day.

When you carry a lot of gear, a lot of heavy gear, you need a belt that can hold up to it. Little flimsy dress/cosmetic apparel belts from most department stores will not cut it. I’ve been wearing belts from The Belt Man for some years now. 1.5″ wide, the horsehide one is my favorite because it doesn’t cost much more than bullhide but has held up fairly strong… even after years of daily wear and some softening up, it’s still stiff enough and holding form enough to do what I need to do.

Except….

Deal with my weight fluctuation. 🙂

With all my weight lifting and the associated food shoveling, of course I’m gaining weight. This requires adjustment of the belt. 🙂 Depending where my weight is and how I’m fiddling with my diet, the belt might hook into hole #2 or maybe hole #3, but most of the times I wish it could hook into hole #2.5. It’s either just a little too loose or a little too tight. I try my belt with the 1″-spaced holes, then the one with the 0.75″-spaced holes and just can’t get things right to both feel comfortable and properly support the gear I wear.

So I gave in.

A couple of days ago I was at GT Distributors and bought a Wilderness Tactical Original Instructor Belt. Appears to be the 1.5″ 5-stitch model, black of course. Why do I not want something like this? Because I don’t like wearing nylon. I like leather belts, leather shoes, cotton, and other natural materials. Sure I can’t be 100% that way, but I prefer it when I can. I mean, wearing a nylon belt with a Brooks Brothers suit just doesn’t seem right, does it? But the advantage here is it buckles anywhere you want it, almost infinitely adjustable, and right now that’s something I need.

I wore it for the first time yesterday and found it quite nice that I could get the tightness just where I wanted. Tight enough to hold things, loose enough to be comfortable. The interesting thing? I’ve been wondering if I needed to adjust my holster or perhaps consider a replacement. But now with the new belt? Things felt a lot better, nothing shifting around or feeling uncomfortable. I’m not sure if it’s the belt tension or perhaps… the belt. Being leather and worn constantly, my main Beltman belt has of course stretched and conformed somewhat to my body, so it’s not exactly a flat, even belt any more. Could it have changed shape enough that it doesn’t work for me any more? Or maybe conforms to the shape of my pre-weightlifting body? Hard to say… would be interesting to have a brand new belt for comparison. Who knows… the lack of stretching and changing may wind me up with using a nylon “tactical” belt for EDC saving the leather for occasions where I need it (e.g. dressing up).

I’m going to spend today out at KR Training and I’ll be wearing the new belt. We’ll see how it goes.

Why aren’t you outraged?

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Set your anti-gun bias aside. You should be outraged about the “Fast And Furious” scandal. This is not how our government and so-called “leaders” should behave. Because if they’re doing this evil, what else are they doing?

Given all the politics and the cover up that even the former ATF director says has occurred, could operation Fast and Furious have been about anything other than pushing for new gun-control laws? And given all of this obfuscation from the Obama administration, isn’t this scandal comparable to the cover up that surrounded Watergate? After all, both administrations forgot that America is a country that reveres its freedom of the press and that in America officers speak out when misguided policies get cops killed. Here mothers testify before Congress when they find out a secret government program, and a stupid one at that, got their son killed.

Not that morality ends at the American border. To stress this point, Rep. Issa held a conference call with journalists on September 21 in which he said Marisela Morales, Mexico’s attorney general, is reporting that at least 200 Mexican deaths can now be traced to weapons from the Fast and Furious program.

And so the investigation and the bloody aftermath continue….

Forbes has this excellent write up.

The NY Post has an article as well.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

[…]

People were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, including at least two American agents and hundreds of Mexicans. And the taxpayers picked up the bill.

So where’s the outrage?

There’s none from the feds. Attorney General Eric Holder has consistently stonewalled Rep. Darrell Issa, Sen. Chuck Grassley and other congressional investigators.

In a constantly evolving set of lies, Holder has denied knowing anything about Fast and Furious while at the same time withholding documents from the House and Senate committees looking into the mess while muzzling some witnesses and transferring others.

Makes you wonder what the agenda was….

There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

If this is true, then Holder & Co. have got to go — and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.

A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.

Of course, there’s a third explanation — that both scenarios are true, and that those in charge of Fast and Furious saw an opportunity to shoot two birds with one Romanian-made AK Draco pistol.

Potential Darwin Award Winner

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The only person that should be looking down the barrel of your gun is your attacker.

Otherwise, you end up like this person. (h/t Shawn). Don’t worry, it’s not gory or anything… a little frightening, and a lot of head shaking at the rules violations.

Let us learn from the mistakes of others:

  • Never look down the barrel of a gun!
  • ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Your face is not a safe direction.
  • All guns are always loaded.
  • Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy… like your face and head.
  • If you fire a round and it goes click, obviously something is wrong. You may have a hang fire, which may well have been the case here. Keep the gun pointed in a safe direction (i.e. not your face), wait about 30 seconds (or more if you wish, no harm).
  • What good do you think is accomplished by looking down the barrel anyways? If in fact you think there is a barrel obstruction, UNLOAD the gun first, then use something like a cleaning rod to pass through the barrel. You could even disassemble the firearm first. This goes back to the point about all guns always loaded. Break it into component pieces so all you have is a “tube of steel” isolated from all other parts and then ok, you can look down the “tube”. Even then my head is wired enough to only want to look down the tube from the breech end.
  • Shotguns do not send clouds of death. Notice the hole in his hat brim wasn’t much bigger than the shotshell diameter. You can still miss with a shotgun, and lucky for this guy he did.

Mainstreaming

/ hsoi

When things start to become normal, you know your side is winning and things are improving.

For instance, non-whites don’t have to sit at the back of the bus. It’s normal to see non-whites sitting wherever they wish. Winning.

Last night I was watching UFC Live 5 on Versus. What did I see? AmmoToGo.com had sponsorship logos on numerous fighters. Duane Ludwig had a sponsorship from Daniel Defense. And someone else had another firearms-related sponsorship, I forgot who and what.

Seeing firearms advertising in non-niche areas. Winning.

Oh, and Ben Henderson was a beast last night.

National Reciprocity

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There’s movement afoot for National Reciprocity.

H.R. 822, introduced in the U.S. House by Representatives Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), would allow any person with a valid state-issued concealed firearm permit to carry a concealed firearm in any state that issues concealed firearm permits, or that does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms for lawful purposes. A state`s laws governing where concealed firearms may be carried would apply within its borders. The bill applies to D.C., Puerto Rico and U.S. territories. It would not create a federal licensing system; rather, it would require the states to recognize each others` carry permits, just as they recognize drivers` licenses and carry permits held by armored car guards. Rep. Stearns has introduced such legislation since 1995.

I’ve been torn on this issue because it hits two things dear to me: gun rights, and state’s rights. While sure the gun rights side of me would love to see this happen, it also feels like it’s potentially stepping upon state’s rights since as it is most gun laws — including concealed carry — is instituted at the state level. How to reconcile these? I know a lot of people, especially these days, are happy to jump on whatever part of politics achieves their goals: if screaming “states rights!” meets their goal, they’ll jump on it, even if it might contradict other things… because too many people are self-serving instead of principled.

Somehow I felt that yes, this is right, but I couldn’t adequately word it in a proper, Constitutional way, if in fact there was one.

The Cato Institute Daily Podcast for September 19, 2011 featured David Kopel and discussed this very issue. It’s only 9 minutes long, but it discusses why yes in fact a system of national reciprocity is Constitutional and doesn’t step on state’s rights. In short, 14th amendment. But to better understand it, listen to the podcast.