Guns

More tips for success in class

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

If you are a student in a handgun class, here’s some further tips for success:

  • Bring lots of magazines. I would say 5 is a bare minimum, and there’s not really any such thing as too many magazines.
    • Make sure those magazines are clean and functioning.
      • Have a magazine brush on you, in case the magazine gets that dirty that you need to clean it to keep it running. Of course, this is slow and takes time and class may not have a break in the action to clean them. This is why it’s good to have as many magazines as possible, so you can just set the broken/dirty one aside and grab a working mag and get back into class.
    • Have appropriate ways to carry those magazines. At least 2 mag pouches on your belt, more if you can and/or is appropriate. Have a way to carry more magazines to the line, like wearing cargo pants.
  • Load all your magazines before coming to class (e.g. night before, at home).
  • The magazines should be appropriate to the context. A 33 round Glock magazine is not appropriate for a defensive handgun class (unless you’re somehow able to conceal a 33 round Glock magazine). A 33 round mag might be appropriate if it was a competition class. Whatever, just consider context and be appropriate for it.
  • The “Sabrina” is rarely a good thing to do.
  • If you are the sort that always racks your slide after inserting a magazine, likely dumping a live round on the ground, at the appropriate time please pick up your live rounds off the ground. Not only is it a waste of good ammo, but it’s more work for us that have to clean up after you to have to sort out all your live ordinance.
  • If the range policy is no steel nor aluminum cased ammo (i.e. brass-only), please honor that policy.
  • Electronic ear muffs aren’t required, but they are nice for hearing range commands and receiving instruction.
  • Safety glasses that completely enclose your eyes are good. So it’s not just from the front, but also from all sides. Things fly around, especially if you’re shooting steel… little lead fragments can and do happen.
  • If you’re not on the line shooting, you should be reloading magazines. While you do that, keep one ear and one eye on the line so you can be aware of what’s going on, especially if any instruction or teachable moments happen.
  • Keep hydrated.
  • Don’t skimp on your gear. Good belt. Good holster.
    • Make sure that good holster allows you to reholster without looking and without having to use your other hand to work the holster… putting your other hand in front of the muzzle isn’t a recipe for success.
  • Keep a little note pad and pen in your pocket, so you can take notes on the drills, your progress, or whatever else you deem important.

Anything to add?

National Parks won’t change a whole lot today

/ hsoi

So today the new federal law change kicks in, where law-abiding citizens can continue to abide by the laws of their state.

Of course, much hysteria is coming with this, but I get the feeling this will be a lot like when concealed handgun licenses were coming about. All the predictions of death and destruction, OK Corral style shootouts in the street, and in the end the result was quite the opposite effect; in fact violent crime statistics went down. Gee.

One cool thing tho is the National Park Services website is to be updated to provide information on the laws of that particular state. In poking around this morning I’m finding the website to be inconsistent, some park entries having information and some not. If they are there, it tends to be under the particular park’s website, under Management, under Laws & Policies. Hopefully it’s just a matter of time before the entire website is updated.

Tragic Rules FAIL

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

In India, a young man and woman get married. The bride is waiting in the car to go to the reception, the groom is on his way. The groom’s uncle wants to celebrate the occasion so he takes out his gun to fire it into the air. Apparently as he was loading it the gun fired accidentally, the bullet striking the groom in the head killing him. Story here.

What a way to turn a most joyous day into a most horrible day.

If the story is correct, there was no accident — only negligence. If the gun fired while it was being loaded there’s only one way for that to happen: the uncle had his finger on the trigger. Yes, perhaps the gun was mechanically unsafe, but that’s unlikely to be the case. Even if that was the case, to continue to carry and use an unsafe firearm is well… bad! So the first rules violation was finger on the trigger. The second rules violation was where the muzzle was pointed — certainly it was not pointed in a safe direction. Even firing into the air is not safe because what goes up must come down.

Whatever gun safety rule set you want to follow, in the end it breaks down to two things: where the muzzle is pointed (safe direction), and keeping your finger off the trigger (on target on trigger, off target off trigger — that simple). Both of those fundamental rules were broken and it created a horrible, tragic day for these families.

Some rules may have been made to be broken, but not these rules.

AT-6 Pistol Workout

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Yesterday I took part in KR Training’s AT-6 Pistol Workout class. This is KR Training’s most advanced class, focusing on high speed shooting. It also focused on long distance shooting.

Drills

We divided into two groups of 7, which made it easier to run the line and rotate between the drill stations. I was in group 2.

The first thing we did? Cold? Shooting groups at 25 yards. Not nice. 🙂  But I don’t go to class to be treated nice, I want to be challenged. Was I good at it? Well, let’s just say I’ve improved. What’s it all about? Trigger control. That’s really the key. I will say it’s also about finding a good index point. For instance, on an IPSC target it’s tough to aim “dead center” because it’s just a blur of brown cardboard and what may look dead center this time may be off just enough next shot such that your groups really open up. You really need an index point, such as aligning the top edge of your sights with the “shoulder edge” of the target. But it all depends what you’re going for: smallest groups (which I was) or getting ’em all in the A-Zone.

We then went to shoot the FBI Qualification course. The course was slightly modified, for instance we didn’t go prone because the ground is still a mess due to the near constant rain we’ve been having for months in this part of Texas.

We had a steel shootoff. Nine steel targets were set up, 4 on the left, 4 on the right, and one stop plate in the middle. Each steel was different shape, size, and distance. One shooter on the left, one on the right. The drill was on the buzzer both shooters draw, engage their plates from outside to inside, must hit each plate once, and the first person to hit the stop plate wins. Then the winners shot against each other and so on. This is high speed shooting at its finest. After running it one time with two-handed shooting, we’d run it again one handed, strong side. Then we’d run it again one-handed but you’d have to draw, shift to your weak hand, then shoot.

A special setup was done with some steel reactive targets. These targets are steel targets but with a plastic “man-like” covering, who is then dressed in a t-shirt. The intent is to provide you with a 3-D realistic target that only falls over if you hit it squarely in the vital areas. It’s a great way to break out of training against 2-D targets and non-realistic targets, which just don’t give you the same aim points at this such target does. It was a small scenario simulating getting out of your car and having to shoot on the move (from car to cover), engaging 2 reactives while you did so. So shoot on the move, proper targeting, shooting from cover, and so on.

Then another shoot on the move segment was done along a string of paper targets. Shoot shoot shoot, kneel behind cover, reload, stand up and keep moving and shooting at more targets. Since that takes a while to run (only one person can shoot at a time), after you shot that you’d go back to the steel range and shoot those same steel targets in the same way, shooting and moving.

Intermixed with all of this was drawing, trigger control, sight alignment, dealing with malfunctions, reloading. You weren’t really told to do these things, you were just expected to keep your gun running at all times. BTW, an UpLULA pays for itself very quickly. 🙂

The crazy thing? Next thing I know Karl is saying it’s time to take down the targets. I couldn’t believe 3 hours had already passed and class was over. I was just getting warmed up! I don’t know what the final round count was, but people were saying close to 400. I guess ultimately it all depended how much you missed on the steel targets. 😉

One thing to note. Usually this is a 4 hour class, but Karl ran it in 3. The class may or may not run like this again in the future. We got all the material, due to excellent structuring of the class (the FBI qual, the steel, and the reactive drills were run simultaneously on different ranges with different instructors).

My Performance

On 25 yard group shooting. I am improving, but I still have a ways to go; I’m pleased with my results in the class, but I know there’s room for improvement. One thing I need to do more of is shooting it from a benchrest so I can eliminate some factors from the equation. Make sure I know my sights, e.g. Springfield factory sights shoot high at 25 yards but I don’t have factory sights. Make sure I know the performance of my reloads AND my carry ammo at that distance. Get my eyes used to it. Then move to freestyle, including one handed shooting.

I’m happy to say I qualified on the FBI course. I heard no one in group 1 qualified, and I’m not sure how the others in group 2 did. Tho I’m not out to compare myself to others, there’s something useful about knowing where you sit in the grander scheme of things. My main lose of points was at 25 yards. But my 25 yard shooting here was the best of the day. It’s a matter of just doing more 25 yard shooting.

On the steel, I didn’t come out the grand prize winner, but I was one of the faster shots. I know my problem is high speed trigger control. I do know how to go fast when it’s time to go fast, and slow when it’s time to go slow, but I’ll still feel the pressure of the timer and the other guy and sometimes yank the trigger. Still, I felt good about my performance and even surprised myself at how well I did. Many times in a class I’m wanting to focus so much on particular areas of improvement that my brain gets in the way of things. Here I was of “no mind”. I knew what to work on, but when it came time to shoot I just shot. All the dry fire I’ve been working on since my private lesson with Karl has paid off.

The reactive. Plain and simple: trigger yanking. High speed, high pressure, and I’d yank the trigger and just miss. Not acceptable. But, I know what to work on. As well, I’m going to need to put in an order for my own targets and buy some photo-realistic targets and train with them more often. While I tend to use IPSC-style targets most of the time, the A-Zone just isn’t the same as the vital area.

Shoot and move, I did alright in.

Other general things: I’m happy with my reloading in the sense of the mechanics and doing it at the right point. Scanning, breathing. My draws were better. When I’d hear the “b” in “beep” on the buzzer my hand was moving and I was getting the gun out there as fast as possible, getting on the trigger faster, but taking my time to get the hits once it got out there (all depending on distance, e.g. I could shoot sooner at 3 yards vs. 25 yards). Again I paid some attention to how others were performing on the draw and I was happy to clear Kydex so quickly. Just like all things, getting faster.

What To Work On

Certainly 25 yard group shooting. Yeah, I know people go on about how most self-defense shootings are within 5 yards, and that’s true. But how do you know when it’s your turn you’re not going to be the statistical exception? One of Tom Givens’ students, I don’t recall the details of the story well enough to retell it, but the key point was he had to make a 20 yard shot (and did, and saved his life). And not just for self-defense, but for action pistol competition… long shots do come up.

I’m at a point now where dry fire is still something to do, but it’s actually not helping me so much any more. The thing is, my brain knows when I dry fire there won’t be any bang or issue to deal with, so everything is perfect. I need recoil. I need the noise, I need the recoil, I need to recover from the shot and shoot again. I need that. I’m not going to progress any further unless I just flat out have more trigger time on the range because the things I need to work on won’t come from dry fire. Yes I still need to dry fire and I won’t stop doing that, but I need to get to the range more and regularly.

When I’m at the range, what I need to do is run drills that push me. So, pick a drill like the Central Texas Standards, Two Target No Reload Standards, the Texas CHL qual, Bill Drills, IPSC classifier stages, whatever. Just pick something. Shoot the drill with no par time. The goal with no par time is to shoot it clean so you can be sure you’ve got the marksmanship skills to shoot it. If you can’t shoot it clean with no time, you need to work until you can shoot it clean with no time. Once you can do that, time how long it takes you to shoot it clean. Whatever that time is, that’s now your starting par time. Shoot it now with that as a par time set so you have the pressure of the buzzer. Once you can do that, drop the par time by say half a second. Shoot it again. Once that’s clean, drop it another half second, and so on. This is what I need, because I’ve got the fundamental skills, I can have the accuracy, I can have the speed. I now need to go faster, yet maintain the accuracy. This is how to do it.

One thing to do as well while I work my drills? Ball and dummy drill.

That’s the big things for me, really. There are some other things to continue to work on as well. I’m buying some weighted “blue magazines” (i.e. dummy magazines, but with the same action and feel as a loaded magazine) so I can do more practice of my reloading technique. On the gear front, while I love my combo mag/flashlight pouch, I need to get another dual mag pouch for use in class; the XD Gear mag pouch is OK to get by with but the fact it cants the mags gets annoying. Plus I’ve had thoughts about carrying 2 reloads and putting the flashlight elsewhere on my person. Furthermore, my XD-9 5″ is going to get sent off to Springer Precision soon. Oh, and I need to buy lots of reloading components. If I’m going to spend that much more time at the range, I need lots of ammo. 🙂

That’s about the size of it. A good class.

9mm load recipe – plinking/target load – performance data

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

So I have my basic 9mm load recipe for a plinking/target load.

Briefly: Berrys 9mm 115 grain plated RN DS bullet, Remington 1.5 small pistol primer, mixed used brass cases, COAL 1.135″, 4.5 grains Titegroup powder. Reloaded on my Hornady Lock-n-Load AP.

I actually had some other bullets and figured why not try out the recipe with those bullets as well. I also made it with Hornady’s 115 grain 9mm FMJ RN bullets, and with some Speer 115 grain 9mm TMJ bullets. Just basic bullets.

I ran them through a chronograph. It was fairly humid today, and temps were probably was in the 50’s when I did the chrono. This was done out at the A-Zone Range. Thanx to Karl Rehn for letting me use his PACT Timer/Chrono setup with the fancy new screens.

Most shots were done out of a Springfield XD-9 with a 4″ barrel. 10 shot strings.  The chrono was about 10′ away from the muzzle. I won’t give all the statistics because frankly I’m not interested in typing up all that data. 🙂

The Data

Federal American Eagle, 9mm 124 grain

This was the only factory ammo I had on me, and I wanted to shoot it to have some sort of baseline comparison. The one bummer is it has 124 grain bullets vs. the 115 grain bullets. Also, I believe I only shot 5 rounds in this particular string, so the numbers aren’t exactly apples-to-apples comparison.

Average Speed: 1128.4 fps
Standard Deviation: 5.9

Berry’s bullets

Average Speed: 1144.6 fps
Standard Deviation: 12.4

Hornady bullets

Average Speed: 1138.3 fps
Standard Deviation: 16.7

Speer bullets

Average Speed: 1158.6 fps
Standard Deviation: 14.8

Berry’s bullets, but out of a 5″ XD-9

Average Speed: 1208.2 fps
Standard Deviation: 13.2

Federal American Eagle, out of a 5″ XD-9

Average Speed: 1162.2 fps
Standard Deviation: 12.5

Data Analysis

My load performs about the same as the factory load, which means that my load would probably be a little underpowered compared to a factory load with a 115 grain bullet. When shooting my reload, that’s about how it feels. It feels very close to factory ammo, just a hair less.

Given the speeds that I’m seeing, this load is certainly about maximum for the Berry’s plated bullets as they’re not supposed to go over 1200 fps. Sure I could perhaps bump up the powder by a tenth of a grain or two to push the Berry’s to their edge, but that’d only be if I was going to shoot this ammo out of a specific gun (like the 4″). Since I want a general purpose load, I’m going to leave things where they are else any more would certainly push things over the limit in the 5″ gun.

I was happy to see the standard deviations were pretty low. The coefficient of variation is just a hair over 1%, with the Hornady bullets being the worst at 1.47%, which is most acceptable to me.

This load would be suitable for IPSC competition, as it does make the minimum power factor. It flirts with the minimum, but the easy way around that? Use the 5″ gun to get a bit more velocity. Using the 5″ gun would be better anyways since it’ll manage the recoil a bit better plus longer sight radius and so on.

I was also surprised to see that overall the Berry’s bullets performed best. Certainly they’re the cheapest bullets of the lot and that they did so well? Great!

Other Performance

I used my reloads to take an advanced shooting class. I never had a problem in terms of failures to feed, eject, or what have you. Everything ran like a champ and I never once had to even think about the fact I was running my reloads instead of factory ammo. The quality was good.

Accuracy was quite nice too. In the class we were shooting from 3 yards out to 25 yards, including groups at 25 yards. The bullets always went where I told them to go… even if I messed up and told them to go somewhere I didn’t intend (e.g. yanked the trigger). In fact, after the class Karl shot my totally stock factory XD-9 5″ from 25 yards for groups using my reloads and things were pretty tight. I forget the exact group size… maybe 2-3″? Not too shabby, especially with a factory trigger and sights.

Conclusion

I’m keeping this load recipe. It seems to run well for me.

Of course over time, some other things will probably change, like trying different primers because well.. that’s what was available for purchase at the time. And I’m sure as soon as I run out of all the bullets I have I’m going to try Precision Delta. I suspect the recipe will run just fine… certainly the raw data will change, but performance will be more or less the same.

I’m happy!

Now I need to crank out as much of it as a can… couple thousand rounds, at least.

Updated: I made some modifications to the load and that additional data can be found here.

Tactical Hunting Review

/ hsoi

My buddy Charles is starting a new online venture: Tactical Hunting Review.

It’s just starting so the website is simple, but I’ve seen the plans and there’s some great things in store… just takes a little time to develop. The intent? To provide a one-stop location for reviews of guns and gear, for “tactical” purposes, for hunting, for other sport. It can even cover things like training, schools, deer leases, you name it. It strives to provide complete reviews from industry people and people like you and me in the field. Visit the site and check out the sidebar on the main page as that explains all.

There’s also a forum to build community.

Check it out. It’s an interesting effort and I’d like to see it succeed.

Good luck, Charles.

PM9 kB!

/ hsoi

Over at TFB, there’s a story of a Kahr PM9 kaboom.

Recently I posted videos of Tom Givens extolling the PM9. Is this kB! any slight on the PM9? I don’t think so. In fact, I think it’s a sight that things have improved!

You see, when I was choosing my carry gun the Kahr’s were getting serious consideration. But I had read about all sorts of problems with them, and how when sending back for customer service the service was hit or miss. It was enough to turn me off to the little guns. However reading this latest story? The kB! wasn’t Kahr’s fault, yet they repaired/replaced everything and even took care of all the shipping costs. A fast turnaround to boot.

I wrote that should I get back in the market for a small semi-auto, the Kahr’s were going to get serious consideration again. Reading about this experience only strengthens that.

BTW, the ammo that went boom was from Georgia Arms. I’ve got a couple cans of GA’s “Canned Heat” in .223 and have yet to have a problem. However, this is not the first story of GA ammo having problems.

Videos: the snub, the anti-snub

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

On December 3-4, 2005 at the American Police Hall of Fame in Titusville, Florida, a one-time event called “The Snubby Summit” was held. It was an event all about the snub nose revolver. The presenters there were a veritable who’s who in the snub world, such as Massad Ayoob, Jim Cirillo, Ed Lovette, Andy Stanford, Michael de Bethencourt, Claude Werner, Tom Givens. Others were there too, like SouthNarc and Paul Gomez.

Sounds like it was a heck of an event. Wish I could have been there.

But in place of being there, I discovered videos from the event are available online!

I’m still working my way through all the videos, but if you watch nothing else you must watch parts 6 and 7 — the Tom Givens segment. Tom comes into a snub conference and talks about how after 30+ years he gave up the snub in favor of a Kahr. While that in and of itself is a compelling talk, it’s all the other things that Tom talks about that are well worth your time to watch.

It doesn’t matter what you carry: a semi-auto, a snub, a pointed stick. Take the 20 minutes and watch Tom’s segments. There’s fantastic insight there.

While you’re at the POSA website, they’ve got lots of other interesting videos as well.

A thought, on Gandhi and guns

/ hsoi

A few days ago I wrote a brief entry about the shooter at University of Alabama, Huntsville. While the entry itself wasn’t much, it’s generated quite a comment thread.

In writing one reply I was thinking about how great icons of pacifism, like the Dalai Lama, aren’t against guns. In the “Seattle Times” on May 15, 2001 The Dalai Lama was quoted as saying:

If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.

Even Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t against guns. He understood they had a place. While I was Googling around to find some quotes, I ran across this page. A gentleman named “Peter C” wrote this:

Up until approximately 1978, I described myself as a Gandhi-an pacifist. As we were leaving an emergency doctor appointment with my doddering old half-blind father, I on one arm and my mother on the other at 11 pm that night, a man larger than any of us came bellowing in our direction — “what is this!? A wedding coming down the street!!” He was obviously… something… drunk? Anyway, I had exactly two emotions at that moment. The first was apprehension. The next was a full-fledged and absolute willingness to die in the protection of my parents. I did not care for my own life _or_his_. Right or wrong, up or down, left or right, green or yellow… I was in that moment pledged to kill or be killed. As it turns out, whether he sensed my resolve, or had a moment of clarity I don’t know, but he nearly instantaneously ceased in his bellowing and harrassment [sic] and went on.

Personally, I have reviewed my personal “peace policies” and frankly, I have a much different view today than at that time. The Indians have had done to them as bad as anything Adolph Hitler is credited in doing to those unfortunate enough to occupy his internment camps. For full documentation of British barbarities, I recommend reading Mike Davis’ “Late Victorian Holocausts” for the full telling. Could guns have prevented these barbarities? I do not know. I know that above the meditation place of the Dalai Lama is a gun. Like most things, the solutions are never one thing. Certainly violence is an act that must be considered in its practical context I believe.

But “evil” seems to be a matter of the human heart, and not born of an implement per se. The implements change, but the heart of evil changes little. Change the heart and you change the implements. I pray that we learn to change our hearts by deep meditation and thus the implements that cause suffering will therefore change to implements that create peace. Meanwhile, let’s stop being so idealistic in our focus upon the implements instead of the deeper causes of unnecessary violence.

It’s the last paragraph that is most relevant.

People want to ban guns because they believe in doing so violence will go away. Sometimes they choose their words to say “gun violence” will go away. Sure, I’ll grant that if there are no guns there would be no gun violence. I mean, we don’t have any Star Trek phasers and consequently we don’t have any phaser violence. Trouble is, while “violence” may be eliminated, “violence” is not. No gun? Fine, they’ll use a knife. Look at the UK. Ban knives? They’ll use sticks. Ban sticks, they’ll use their bare hands. What are you going to do then? Cut off our hands? then we’ll use our feet. Are we then going to cut off our feet? Because once we do that yeah… that might actually finally inhibit things. I know it sounds like a ridiculous extreme, but that is the path it takes. You can ban all the objects you want, but it doesn’t change what’s in the heart of a person. If some person is intent on causing pain and suffering, violence and destruction, they are going to do that even if the only thing they can use is their bare hands.

So yes, let’s stop focusing on the implements and instead start focusing on the deeper causes of unnecessary violence.

Unpossible

/ hsoi / 28 Comments

So a professor at University of Alabama, Huntsville shoots and kills 3 other professors and wounds 3 others.

But I thought college campuses were gun free zones?

Fat lot of good those signs and policies did.

Furthermore, there were no police nor external security forces there to protect anyone.

Granted, this woman was a case of crazy. But details apparently are that she was in a meeting discussing if she was to get tenure or not, she was denied, pulled out a gun and started shooting. So this was all planned — premeditated. She made up her mind that if she was to be denied tenure, she was going to make people pay with their lives.

You know that saying about shooting fish in a barrel?

She knew they couldn’t fight back. She knew she would have all the advantage.

How might things have been different if the other professors were also armed? Would she have taken a more diplomatic approach to resolving her problem? Could have not have 3 dead and 3 wounded? Of course, it’s all speculation. But the sad reality is things like this happen in gun free zones. From Howard Nemerov:

Ron Borsch is a part-time, commissioned consultant trainer for the Bedford (Ohio) Police Department, with 30 full-time years of service and 17 years with SWAT. He still works part-time, managing the SEALE Police Academy in Bedford, where he specializes in tactically training first-responders, teaching them how to deal with what he calls “active killers.”

Borsch notes that nearly all mass murders occur in places where law-abiding citizens are banned from possessing firearms, either by property owners or government regulation.

The data shows that when law-abiding citizens are allowed the means to protect themselves, violent crime decreases. Everyone likes that end: decrease in violent crime. Trouble is, there are those that don’t like the means to that end. The reality is, it’s the only means that is achieving that end.