Guns

The Three C’s

/ hsoi

The following was written by Tom Givens. I merely reformatted it.

I recently saw an interview with Bill Murphy, a senior instructor at Gunsite. He said the purpose of professional firearms training was the Three C’s: Competence, Confidence, and Control. According to Murphy, Competence begets Confidence. Confidence allows you to stay in control of yourself, and the situation. Sage advice.

Competence: It’s really hard to imagine how anyone could argue for less competence in a life saving skill. The defensive use of a firearm has vast, far reaching implications. You may not need a defensive firearm more than once or twice in your entire lifetime, but the need will be extremely severe. Your life, the lives of loved ones, and the lives of innocent third parties may literally hinge upon your competence. Your actions will be reviewed long after the fact by both civil and criminal authorities, and poor performance on your part may ruin the rest of your life, assuming you survived the encounter. There is simply no excuse for being incompetent with a firearm, if you’re going to carry one for self defense.

Murphy touched on the other, often overlooked aspect of competence. As you train and practice you build skill. As you build skill, you also build confidence. Confidence: This is an essential characteristic of successful warriors. If your team gets on the bus thinking, “We’re going to get our butts kicked tonight”, guess what. You sure are! You lost that game before you ever set foot on the playing field. Confidence in one’s skills allows the mind to remain calm and assess tactical options. This avoids panic and translates into efficient motion and good hits. You must be able to keep your wits about you in a crisis, and this is far easier if your own mind knows you have the physical skills to deal with the situation. Note that this is NOT bravado, but a calm assurance that you have the skills needed to win.

Control: Ninety percent of gunfighting is mental. If you can control yourself, you can control the situation. This is made infinitely easier if your physical skills (gunhandling/marksmanship) have been ingrained through hard work to a reflexive level. This frees the mind to work on the other issues, like keeping watch on their hands, being aware of nearby cover or escape routes, where are bystanders/family members, etc. You cannot keep up with these variables and think about how to run your gear at the same time. Confidence in your gear and your skills give you control.

Competence/Confidence/Control

Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others.

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

From SayUncle I discover this little gem from the Brady Campaign. You see, a pastor in Kentucky, Ken Pagano, gave up 30 years in the pulpit so he could focus on issues of the Second Amendment and church-security. So what does Paul Helmke say about that?

As for Mr. Pagano, Mr. Helmke said, “Maybe he should be more concerned about the Fifth Commandment than the Second Amendment.”…

That Commandment is that you shall not murder, often mis-translated as kill. So Mr. Helmke, what are you saying about us?

People have “this idea” that Christians have to turn the other cheek?  Where in Heaven’s name did they get that?

Oh, right… from Jesus Christ:

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Nobody ever said emulating Christ would be easy, least of all the man himself….

Casting stones, Paul?

Maybe you should do a small bit of research and learn about how Christianity actually views such matters.

The title of this post? It comes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

Introducing children to firearms

/ hsoi

A nice video about when and how to introduce your children to firearms:

They cover important things like safety, selecting an appropriate rifle, and having fun.

Safety is of course the most important thing, followed by having fun.

Again, Tam says it best

/ hsoi

So I posted about open carry. I’m all for the restrictions being lifted. But I’m just not sure it’s right for me because of the potential for hassle. Yeah maybe 99 times out of 100 I won’t get hassled, but all it takes is one time to irritate me. I’ve only got so much time in a day and I’ve got other things I’d rather spend it on.

And yet again, I see Tam voices things quite well:

For the record, I’ve no real position on it one way or the other. I don’t generally O.C., mostly to avoid excessive face time with the Po-Po and conversations with the occasional goober that can’t resist a “Hey, you got a gun there! You ‘spectin’ trouble?” or “Did you know that your gun’s cocked?“

911 is a joke – again

/ hsoi

Reading this article, all I could think of was the Public Enemy song, “911 Is A Joke”

GAITHERSBURG, Md. – A Montgomery County woman is demanding answers about a delayed response to a 911 call she placed from her home. She told FOX 5 she woke up at 5:49 a.m. to find her home trashed and burglarized, and she called 911—but help didn’t arrive until 7:09 a.m.

80 minutes from call to arrival.

[Captain Paul] Starks says an officer was finally dispatched at 6:54 a.m.– more than hour after the initial call.

65 minutes before an officer was even dispatched. 15 minutes from dispatch to arrival on scene.

Granted, this is likely a rare occurrence — but rare means it still happens. When it’s your life on the line, do you want to be that statistical anomaly?

I’m not saying to not call 911 when you need them; you still should. What I am saying is you should not rely on them to save and protect you. They just can’t.

Shiny is the best of all

/ hsoi

Texas. Bigger is better, right? I recall when I first came to Texas being told that yes that’s true, but shiny is the best of all. 🙂

Now with the garage in order and having wired a few heavy-duty extension cords around so I could have electricity where I need it, I figured what the heck…. I took some of the dirty brass and threw it into the case tumbler. I’m not reloading yet, but hey… I could set things up, I have electricity by the table… why the heck not?

Gosh… all that .308 brass is sure shiny and puuuuuuuuuuuty. 🙂

foo.c is supposed to come down to help me get it all squared away. Just a matter of finding time at this point. Schedule’s a bit full. Soon.

Changing attitudes on open carry

/ hsoi / 15 Comments

Robb Allen goes off about open carry… the catalyst for the rant being “one of our own.”

On the subject of open carry, I’m still undecided. I see no reason we shouldn’t be allowed to do such a thing. Open carry (at least of handguns) isn’t allowed in Texas (of all places!), so it’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about. Even if I could open carry here, I’m not sure I’d do it. Why? In a lot of respects, the hassle. I really don’t need to have my life and time spent dealing with people freaking out over me carrying a gun. But on the same token I can see that unless people see guns all the time, they’ll never get used to it; in fact, the less they see, the more the norm becomes to not see guns and the sight of a gun will freak people out.

I think back to some months ago. I was at Cabela’s. I was standing in line in their food court area to get something to eat. I saw a gentleman get in line. I noticed he was carrying a 1911 in a beautiful leather holster on his hip. Everything was out in the open. I had no idea what this gentleman was about. He didn’t have a uniform on; he was wearing a cowboy hat, crisp button down shirt, blue jeans. I didn’t see any other things in his belt, such as a badge. Nothing looked like law enforcement, but he was open carrying. And no one flinched. Well, I flinched… only because I was admiring the leatherwork and trying to steal more looks at the gun itself. 🙂  But then as well, I was also at Cabela’s, likely a place where the folks there aren’t going to flinch at the sight of a gun. So who knows. Maybe people won’t flinch and the notion of hassle is all in my head.

For me, I’ve been changing my clothing a bit. Due to that, I could see myself a little more open to open carry. In fact, lately as I’m around the house the carry gun is exposed. But then someone knocks on the door, or I need to run trash or recycling out to the cans, or want to put some birdseed out for the ducks, or whatever… and before I go out I have to put a shirt over. Being able to just step outside for 30 seconds would be nice. And so, to not be able to do it is a hassle.

Frankly, people in this country seem to like the notion of choice. So in the end, I’d like to have choice: to choose to open carry or not. The only way to do that is to stop prohibiting it. Then to open carry or not is your choice… and isn’t choice a wonderful thing?

Three holsters compared

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

There are three holsters that are frequently recommended for IWB carry: CrossBreed SuperTuck Deluxe, Comp-Tac Minotaur MTAC, and Tucker Gun Leather’s The Answer. The thing about these three holsters is they are all of basically the same design, but of course have their differences. When you search t3h int3rw3bz for information or comparisons on these three designs, often you don’t get a complete enough picture: the poster owns one of the holsters and loves it or maybe they owned two of them.

Foo.c happens to be one of the few people that have owned all three of the holsters, and he provides his review and comparison of them.

Me? I love my MTAC, but I admit to not owning the other two. SuperTuck always seemed to be “no frills” which includes things like a lack of adjustability. Granted once you get the holster set for your body you’re unlikely to adjust it, but the lack of adjustment assumes that everyone is built the same and wears in the same way. The Answer always seemed to be “all the frills” which isn’t bad either, but it seemed like paying a lot more for little details that I didn’t need. That said, Tucker does some gorgeous leatherwork.

Productive

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

I’ve been fairly quiet today since I’ve been away from the computer most of the day.

The garage has been bugging me lately. Junk has been piling up, hard to get around, and I can’t do things in there. Biggest thing? All that reloading equipment from exodus still sitting there, unused. It’s been getting to me. I took the Speer Reloading manual into the house a few weeks ago and have been reading it. And I think with hunting season upon me I have lofty dreams of my own hunting load. So… before I went to bed last night I decided I was going to revamp the garage.

Off to Home Depot. Buying wood screws, brackets, wood, sundry other things. I also picked up a new Makita cordless drill and circular saw. Some years ago I had a Porter-Cable cordless drill but when it died a couple years back and I couldn’t get replacement batteries I opted to get a corded drill. I made the wrong decision to save a little money and the drill I got lacked important things like a brake and a clutch. So while I was happy with the corded drill the rest of the drill sucked. So the Makita was a great purchase and is very cool, but the battery didn’t seem to last very long. Supposedly it’s a fast recharge tho, but when I put the battery on the charger it flashed the “bad battery” lights at me. Hrm. Not good. I’ll contact Makita in the morning. Never owned a circular saw, but it’s one of those things that the past some whiles I’ve had enough times when it would have been nice if I had one (always managed to get by), so I figured now was as good a time as any to finally buy one.

My ceilings are high so I put the shelves up high all around the perimeter of the garage interior. Just simple brackets, plywood, and wood screws. I was then able to store all the boxes of holiday decorations, coolers, and various other things up high. Threw away a bunch of crap, rearranged a bunch of stuff, and then I was able to give the reloading table a proper home. Ahhhh… 🙂

The garage looks good. Motorcycle looks happy in there (tho it’d look happier out on the road of course). There’s room to move, better organization, and again… a place to reload. That’s the important thing. 🙂