Given what I observed in DPS2 class, I’d like to make a comment about reloading semi-automatic handguns.

There are many techniques for reloads. Here’s Todd Jarrett demonstrating the most popular:

It’s important to note that Todd Jarrett is one of the top shooters in the world, but notice on the last two techniques (reload with retention, tactical reload). Notice how long they take to do. Consider Todd Jarrett has practiced these heavily, he has minimal chance of flubbing them but is still human and could well flub them.

Now consider yourself. Are you just a private citizen that carries a gun for self-defense? Do you practice at the level Todd Jarrett does? When your life is on the line, do you have the time or desire or motor-skills to deal with fumbling? As well, consider that shit can happen at a moment’s notice and the longer the gun is out of commission well… the longer the gun is out of commission.

The only reload you really need to worry about is the so-called “speed reload.” I was made a believer of that fact at the Combined Skills class. Why is this the only reload to care about? Because it is the fastest reload. It keeps your gun out of action for the least amount of time and gets you back in the fight as quickly as possible. It breaks your concentration as little as possible. Everything about it is less, simpler, the most basic, the essence of reloading. If you did have to do another type of reload it would be what Jarrett called the “slide lock” reload or some may call the “emergency reload” because you’ve run the gun dry. Still, that reload is about the same as the speed reload apart from the need to release the slide.

Watching people in DPS2 you saw all manner of fumbling and fiddle-farting around with magazines. Since cardboard targets don’t return fire or otherwise attack you back, you don’t feel the pressure of needing to get the gun back in the fight as quickly as possible. As we got people to just drop the magazines on the ground and speed reload, it made a huge difference. It’s just a magazine. Let it drop. It can handle it, and if it doesn’t then perhaps you need new quality magazines or a gun that doesn’t only have cheap magazines available for it. Yeah it might get dirt in it, but hopefully your gun is reliable enough to handle some dirt.

Practice like you fight, and hopefully then you will fight like you practice.

I had put time into other reloading techniques, like reload with retention or tactical reload because I could see they were more involved motor skills and thus needed more practice. Sure I practiced speed reloads but it seemed so simple that I didn’t practice it a whole lot. It still is simple, but given my personal goals I see little reason to practice any other reload. So the time I spent practicing those other reloads I’ll just now spend on speed reloads or other more relevant skills. Again note this is due to my personal goal set. Your goals and situational requirements may be different and may require the application of other reload techniques. Train accordingly.

I spent all of yesterday at KR Training helping with classes.

Three classes were being run: Basic Pistol 1, Defensive Pistol Skills 2, and AT-1A Low Light Shooting.

BP1

I think I enjoy the Basic Pistol classes the most. The teacher in me has always been drawn to beginners. When I taught Kuk Sool, I enjoyed working with  white and yellow belts and often was the designated “go-to” man for doing introductory lessons. When I was teaching kids in Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts, it was great to work with kids just learning the basics. If you can help people lay a good foundation, they’ll have something solid to build upon, so beginner stages are very important.

There were a wide range of people in the class, from young college students to an old grandmother… probably in her 70’s or 80’s (she was a hoot). Men and women, various ethnicities (black, white, Asian). I always point this out about the BP1 classes because people like to stereotype gun owners as old white male knuckledragging rednecks, and it’s simply not the case as the composition of these classes demonstrate.

The class ran well, people had fun. We’ll see where they go from here.

DPS2

Defensive Pistol Skills 2 is a recent addition to the course catalog, building upon the skills in DPS1. Skills such as reloads, dealing with malfunctions, moving and shooting, basic use of cover/concealment.  Class started a little slowly as we had to bring people onto the same page, but in the end it worked well. There was some discussion on reloads and it’s something I’ll talk about in another posting. All in all, people did alright.

The real fun part of the class is what’s done at the end. There’s a scenario set up (akin to an IDPA/IPSC) that folks got to run through. There was also a course of fire shot for score. The score doesn’t truly amount to anything more than showing you where you lie in your skills and what you may need to work on.

Big things to take from this course: you don’t want to get too close to cover, get the gun in play and keep it in play, slow down and get good hits.

AT-1A

Foo.c came out for this course. I didn’t get to talk with him much since he was in class and I was helping run things. This is always a fun and informative class because shooting in the dark is fun. You get to see how much muzzle flash your ammo makes, you get to play with toys like flashlights and lasers. And for many, this is the first time they have to do some stuff that does not involve shooting but just using their head. I remember the first time I did that scenario and what a sobering experience it was. The bottom line: is it worth dying for?

Other Stuff

As expected, I saw a lot of the same people I see at these events, which is always good.

I also got to meet a couple people.

I got to meet RevolverRob. Nice guy (tho his girlfriend needs a better car *grin*). Rob did pretty well. He was a little slow moving at the start of drills in DPS2 (i.e. you gotta pick up your feet and move, draw faster, shoot faster… this is your life in the line!). But he did soon find his feet and as the day wore on he really picked up and was shooting well: you could see the improvement in how he was addressing the drills and in the holes on the paper. Yeah he kept missing one steel plate as we ran through a scenario in AT-1A, but that’s OK because it served as a teachable moment. If I remember correctly, he was using the Harries technique and it just wasn’t working because it was shadowing his front sight instead of illuminating it. When he repositioned to use a cheek/neck index (what KR prefers), the sights were properly illuminated and the steel plate went ping. Rob, you did well in class and it seems it was a good day for you.

I got to meet Leslie Buck. I knew he had been coming to KRT for firearms training, and so I was hoping to run into him sooner or later. So there I was in the classroom, this man walks in with a Pekiti Tirsia Kali t-shirt on, he introduced himself and I must admit… I got a little giddy inside. 🙂 It was very much my pleasure to meet him. What impressed me so much was his attitude. He was so kind, nice, humble, courteous. The man had no (evident) ego. He came with a mindset to learn. You could see it when he was on the line: warrior mindset, student mindset. He’s not a bad shot either, just needs to send that new XD off to Springer Precision. 😉  I asked about training Kali/Silat with him, and while due to logistics I cannot train with him on a regular basis, I’m more than welcome to come to various seminars and such that he puts on. I’m certainly looking forward to such things as my schedule permits.

I also got to shoot some .38 defensive ammo in low light to check out the flash signatures. Unfortunately we ran out of time and I wasn’t able to run everything I brought, but we ran CorBon DPX 110 grain, Buffalo Bore 158 grain LSWC (20/20c), and Federal Premium Nyclad 125 grain. All 3 certainly had ample muzzle flash, but to our surprise the Buffalo Bore exhibited the least flash of the 3: we expected it to have the most. I would say the Federal had the most flash, the CorBon in the middle. We tried to capture it on film but not a lot made it… it’s just tough to time it. I did want to try Gold Dot 135 grain but didn’t get a chance too. RevolverRob offered up some Remington R38S12 but again no time…. that I would have been very curious to see. My guesses would be the Gold Dot would have very low flash and the Remington would be rather visible since it’s just “Remington Express”.

A good day. Long day. But a good one. Weather was gorgeous. I can’t complain.

Courtesy of Suburban, a collection of Ruger 10/22 mods.

I like my Ruger 10/22, and my kids do too. It’s a great little rifle and I’d love to actually have a few of them to outfit in different ways. I’ve been wanting to do some mods, especially the bolt release mod. Seeing this list gives me some ideas for other things… like the extractor tuning would probably become #2 on my list.

This blog posting is more for myself, so I can find these mods easily later. 🙂

It’s always fun to respond to stats.

shotgun choke home defense

Some would say you want as open as possible to scatter and increase chances of hitting and damage done. Others would say you want a tight choke to manage spread over distance and ensure all pellets hit the intended target (and some don’t stray to hit unintended targets). Me? I’ll take a tighter choke because my home defense situation could go up to 25 yards so I need to mind the spread. I don’t want any pellet to not hit the intended target. And I’d like to increase my chances of the shot going where I want it to go, not being spread about in non-vital areas.

Some articles on choke and spread: here and here.

Bottom line however is it’s not as simple as the choke. It’s the shotgun itself, it’s the choke, it’s the ammo, it’s the skill of the shooter, it’s the conditions it may need to be shot under. There are a lot of factors. You should figure them out and know them. Take the shotgun to the range, take different ammo, take all the chokes, try it at different distances and see how it all performs. There’s no simple formula, you have to do the work.

is a ruger sr-22 an assault

I assume “rifle” or “weapon” was lopped off the search string. Is it? Depends who you ask. Ask Paul Helmke, yes it is. Ask me? Nope.

iron sights vs optic for home defence

Whichever works best for you, your abilities, your conditions of operation. The key is to be able to hit your target and have a reliable system. If your optics run on batteries, are you sure they are fresh and working so when the fur suddenly flies the optics will be functional? This is one reason I’d prefer an Aimpoint, because they have incredible battery life. Turn it on, leave it on always, change the batteries once a year.

what is the best automatic rifle

The one I use, of course.

For those that don’t know the joke, ask someone what the best of anything is, and the answer will be whatever I use/choose. It’s a bit of a biased or loaded question, because I’m not going to use or do anything that is the worst, right? So naturally all my choices are the best. Or maybe this isn’t that widespread of a joke… I know it’s one in the martial arts world: what’s the best martial art? Why the one I study, of course!

150 or 168 best in m1a rifle

Hey, I just updated that posting.

is hornaday a good ammo

No, but Hornady is.

9mm handguns for women

They all come in pink and have lacy frills.

Folks there’s no such thing as a gun for a gender. There are things as guns based upon the size of a person’s hands, the strength of a person, and so on… but these things are gender independent.

is snubnose enough

For what?

what does the acronyms, acp,+p,fps means

ACP – Automatic Colt Pistol

FPS – feet per second

+P isn’t an acronym. It means the ammunition was loaded to “above standard pressure” levels, typically 10% higher but maybe, maybe not. Here’s an article.

The KR Training October 2009 newsletter is now posted.

One gem was a link to this video of an encounter between a robber and a private citizen. Prevents the robbery, prevents possible injury to 3 adults and 1 child.

My Ammo for an M1A posting is one my more popular blog postings.

Some questions recently arose regarding the use of Hornady TAP in an M1A. The original listing in my post said to avoid TAP, and that directive was (supposedly) coming from Springfield Armory themselves. However, a lot of people were saying TAP shot just fine out of their M1A’s. My take was if SAI said don’t do it, then don’t do it; or if you do do it, the results are your responsibility. Just because it shoots fine doesn’t mean there aren’t issues. For instance, some folks hunt with soft point bullets in their M1A but this will cause lead to shave off and eventually gum up the works… maybe a few rounds through won’t matter, but over time….  But for all of that, it was still odd that you couldn’t shoot TAP because they are such high quality rounds. The lack of explanation didn’t sit well.

Since the list was called into question, I contacted Springfield Armory about it. I showed them the blog posting and received useful response. I have updated my posting with the latest information. Note that TAP is not only usable, but recommended for best accuracy!

Brigid has a great write up on safety glasses for shooters.

Most shooters wear hearing protection, but few wear eye protection and often when they do it’s just sunglasses or prescription eyewear that may not be able to handle the impacts. You may need hearing protection more often than eye protection, but when someone whizzes back and hits you in the face what then? Your ears may be able to take a lot of blasts before you lose your hearing, but your eyes will probably only take one hit before you lose your eyesight. I can take losing some hearing, I can’t take losing my eyesight… I could deal with being deaf, I don’t know if I could deal with being blind.

My trouble has been that I wear prescription glasses and it’s been difficult to find protective eyewear that can fit comfortably over the glasses. What I’ve found so far works for protection, but not for comfort. Granted there are some options (Brigid mentions them) but they are wicked expensive. I admit, that there are times I wear just my prescription glasses alone. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not ideal because 1. they only cover so much, leaving things like the sides wide open, 2. they’ll only take so much impact, 3. if they do get damaged, even slightly (e.g. a little lead ricochets back) then I’m out an expensive pair of glasses and perhaps “blind” for a while with the loss of the glasses (good luck driving home from the range).

Lo and behold, a few days ago an email from the NRA Store arrives in my inbox, and it advertises a pair of NRA OTG Shooting Glasses. They are designed to fit over most prescription glasses. They have two styles for indoor and outdoor shooting. Meetings ANSI standards and UV protection too. Seems like a win-win and yes, I plan on ordering a pair.

Winchester has made a Ballistics Calculator.

It requires Microsoft Silverlight (meh). What I like about this calculator vs. others is that the application is a bit more interactive. It’s not just plug in numbers and get out numbers. Sure you do plug stuff in and get numbers out, but you can also play with things like the zeroing point, simulated wind and temperature, and try and compare other loads.

It’s nifty.