Guns

Bulletproof Carbon

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Check this. Carbon nanotubes being used to make bulletproof material.

Nanocomp Technologies, is the first in the world to make sheets of carbon nanotubes — microscopic tubes stronger than steel but lighter than plastic. The Pentagon has financed much of the Concord, N.H., firm’s work; stakes include the $500 million U.S. market for body and vehicle armor, which is currently dominated by DuPont’s Kevlar.

In April, [Nanocomp’s owner, David] Lashmore had a mechanical multicaliber gun shoot bullets at different versions of his sheet, each less than a fifth of an inch thick, at a speed of 1,400 feet per second. Four sheets were breached, but three showed no damage. Lashmore and his 35 employees were ecstatic.

[…]

Army tests show the material works as well as Kevlar. The military also hopes to replace copper wiring in planes and satellites with highly conductive nanotubes, saving millions of dollars in fuel costs.

It’s interesting. Lashmore was able to grow nanotubes large enough to make into yarn and sheets, and from there they can do whatever. Gotta wait to see where this is going to go.

Range Report – always good to learn something

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Went to the Austin Rifle Club this morning with Tom Hogel. Tom is becoming a good friend, and he’s certainly a mentor for me in the realm of shooting (and some other areas too; I learn a lot from him). It was good to have his eyes looking over my shoulder, and I always welcome his input and corrections.

So we met for breakfast (big mushroom omelette, side of grits, fresh squeeze grapefruit juice… mmmm), then headed to the range.

Working

My intention was to work on things from the Combined Skills class, Tom’s intent was to work on some 25 yard shooting. I started just warming up at about 7-10 yards and was shooting OK. Tom was watching me and he directed me over to his 25 yard setup. I was shooting for accuracy and not hitting where I was shooting. Tried Tom’s gun and was nailing it, Tom tried my gun and was also a bit high, so there’s suspect that my sights might be hitting high at longer distances. I’m not convinced that’s the case just yet (1. we should have used a benchrest to verify, but didn’t, 2. I have other issues which I’m about to detail), but I have noted it for later to check into. Watching me shoot more and me paying attention to my shooting, some things were noticed.

First thing noticed by Tom was my trigger finger was bumping into the frame of the gun, thus pushing my shots to the left. I didn’t notice it myself, but once he mentioned it I did notice. My finger is coming into the trigger guard at a downward angle with the pad of my finger touching the “top” of the trigger (where it comes out of the frame); thus, that means the side of my trigger finger gets pressed into the frame and my finger works at a downward angle. When I moved my finger pad to tough the end of the trigger, all was better. Tom suspected it might be subconscious… my fingers are hurting from the past weekend, I’ve got a rubbed raw spot on my right middle finger (where it comes up under the trigger guard), so my body might be trying to avoid it. I suspect not. I suspect it’s just an unconscious shifting of my hands or a poor grip from the get go. I’ll have to watch for this and do a lot of dry fire to try to get the proper trigger finger back.

Second thing was uneven hand pressure. I’ve noticed this lately. I’ve been working hard on that “Todd Jarrett kung fu grip” where you “grip 20% harder”, and there’s no question it helps with recoil management. But what happened was I was putting a majority of my grip into the left hand. It was an effort to put more into my pinky area, to counter the arc the gun takes when it recoils. While it worked well for recoil management, the trouble was I noticed it turned my grip into a Weaver-esque “push-pull” sort of tension. That’s not what you want. What you want is a neutral grip (read Brian Enos‘s book). I had noticed this in the past some weeks, it was alluded to during the Combined Skills weekend, and Tom mentioned it again. So today I worked on that a bit, adjusting my grip (along with the trigger finger), and lo… shooting improved.

Another thing that came from this. I’ve been having problems where I’m shooting and next thing I know my magazine drops free. Not good. I’ve been trying to determine why this is happening. Is it something I’m doing? bad magazine? faulty magazine catch? I’m not sure, and honestly I’m still not 100% sure of the problem, but I suspect it’s me. While shooting today (i.e. being aware of trying to look for the problem), I noticed that upon recoil my left index finger is wrapped around such that it contacts the magazine release on the right side of the gun. Is that what’s happening? I don’t know, but it’s highly suspect. No mags dropped free today, but feeling where my fingers shifted during recoil I can’t help but wonder.

Playing

After having shot a bit, Tom pulled out his .44 magnum revolver. Big gun, heavy. Slick trigger on it. I shot some target loads and they were no big deal. Shot one powerful CorBon load… ooh, that kicks. It wasn’t too bad, to be honest. The main thing it did was fuel my desire for a big revolver. 🙂

Also, every time I shoot one of Tom’s XD-45’s (all Springer Precision customized) I want to get my XD-9 5″ customized.

As well, picking up all of that .45 ACP brass… yeah, I want a gun in .45 ACP. 1911… mmmm….

Got to finally try out the SureFire Shottimer iPhone app. It works but… being under the tin roof of the range, I think there was just too much noise/concussion for the microphone to pick up everything. If a shot went fast enough it could miss a follow-up shot. I played around with the settings some and couldn’t get it quite right. I’ll keep playing with it tho. It’s free so why not.

Summary

So what did I learn:

  • Need to be aware of trigger finger bumping into the frame
  • Need to even out my grip pressure – neutral pressure.
  • Keep watching my grip, if it’s causing the right-side mag release to hit.
  • .44 Mag is fun
  • I want lots and lots of money to buy more guns and customize them too. 😉
  • Tom’s a lot of fun to hang out with.

A good start to the weekend, I’d say.

Sometimes calling the police is the better answer.

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

An 85-year old man here in Austin was just arrested for firing upon city (contract) workers.

Apparently the workers were doing some tree trimming, this man thought they were trespassing, and fired 5 shots at them (claimed 3 were warning shots).

  1. Regardless of legality, trespassing is not enough reason to use deadly force.
  2. If you have to shoot, it’s because your life (or perhaps someone else’s) is in danger.
  3. If someone’s life is in danger and thus you have to shoot, warning shots are not what you fire.

This was irresponsible gun handling and irresponsible situation handling. Armchair quarterbacking this, if you didn’t want to confront the individuals, calling the police to have them look into it would have been the better thing to do.

Birdshot is for birds

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Birdshot is for birds, not for self-defense.

Via Joe we have a story of a guy getting shot in the chest with what is believed to be birdshot. The guy chases the shooter for a bit, then decides he needs to stop and get himself to the hospital. If he can get shot in the chest (likely at close range given the nature of the story), run for a while, then make the conscious decision to get himself to the hospital… I think the only thing the birdshot was effective at was giving him a medical bill and a bad evening (and couple weeks while he heals up).

Buckshot. Buckshot. Buckshot. I just don’t understand why people continue to promote birdshot for anything other than shooting birds.

Updated: Some compelling data and information about buckshot.

NRA Country

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

NRA Country. The NRA and country music joining together.

I really don’t care for country music. There’s some good stuff for sure, but on the whole it’s not my cup of tea.

But I did like this from the website:

Chores aren’t subject to negotiation. The fish don’t bite at noon. Never talk back to mom before dinner. Keep your friends and keep your word. Know what’s worth fighting for. Be proud of where you’re from. And, in life and in the field, always shoot straight.

I’d modify that to say “never talk back to mom” period. I guess it’s fine as-is tho, since once you finish with today’s dinner, it will officially start the period before tomorrow’s dinner. 🙂

Back to the stats

/ hsoi

And now, let’s delve back into the blog stats search terms….

the 3 things everyone should know

  1. Treat others like you want to be treated.
  2. Freedom is something we must give to others if we wish it for ourselves.
  3. Don’t eat the yellow snow.

muscovy duck shit

Yes they do, and in copious amounts.

how to shoot snub nose well

Practice. Get some training. Practice more.

is a ar rifle good for home defense

Yup.

opeth smokes what cigarettes

Why would you care about this, unless Mikael asked you to run down to the store and buy him a pack?

how fast can 9mm clip empty

Well that depends. First, find me a 9mm clip. Oh, you meant magazine. Gotcha. We might need to care about how many rounds are in it as I can sure empty 1 round faster than 10 faster than 20. Then we need to know by what means are you emptying it: using your fingers to shave rounds off the top, loading the magazine into the gun and shooting all the rounds. Or of course, the fastest way is to just get a cheap aftermarket Glock magazine, load it up, drop it on the floor, let the baseplate shatter and you’ll see really how quickly you can empty a 9mm magazine. 🙂

truth on shotgun spread

Yes, pellets fired from a shotgun do spread out. That’s the truth.

To really know how that spread works out, you’ll have to take a particular shotgun, with a particular choke, with a particular load, and go try it yourself. Set up some cardboard (large piece of it, 2′ to 3′ per side at least) against a good backstop. Step back to your desired distance to shoot from, then shoot. You’ll see how it spreads out… or more specifically, the pattern of how the load’s pellets disperse. This can vary from shotgun to shotgun, from choke to choke, from load to load. So really, the only way to know 100% how things will go is to check it yourself.

do you really need anything more than 9mm

Last time I made homemade ice cream, a gun didn’t help me at all…. I needed a lot of other things to accomplish that.

But if you mean for self-defense, 9mm with good modern self-defense loads works just fine. Caliber is important, but more important is shot placement. 9mm caliber bullets will do their job so long as you do your job.

is a buckshot rifle good for self defense

I didn’t know rifles could shoot buckshot.

how to use 3 dot sight

Don’t.

how to line up three dot sights

Again, don’t.

why are there three dots in my sight

Because someone was under the mistaken notion it was a good idea. If you can’t replace them with better sights, at least black out the dots on the rear sight.

can a 13 year old shoot a 9mm

Sure. Tori Nonaka handles one just fine. With proper technique and practice, they can certainly handle it.

Combined Skills Course Weekend- The Review

/ hsoi / 12 Comments

I spent the weekend of September 12-13, 2009 in a Combined Skills class.

The premise of the class is to provide students with skills that can help you stay alive: skills to avoid violent confrontations in the first place, skills to deal with a violent confrontation should it be necessary. The reason it’s “combined skills” is because a lot of such classes are geared towards a single issue: tactics/mentality, gun handing skills, or empty-hand combatives. This class, as the name implies, combines these things into a single lengthy, advanced-level course. This is not a class for beginners.

Read on for my perspective on the class. I’ll cover who did it, what we did, how I did, what I learned. Yes, it’s a long read, but it’s a good one chock full of information. Note this is all coming from memory after two hard and exhausting days of working, so most should be correct but I may have a detail about a statistic wrong or a quote incorrect. If I do have something wrong, I hope someone will correct me. But you’ll not be able to correct me if you don’t read it all, plus if you skip any of it you might miss the awesome pictures. 🙂

Continue reading →

Building up my home defense gun – or not

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

It’s clear that I prefer a rifle like an AR-15 for home defense. I’ve still got my shotguns, I’ve still got my handguns, but if there’s an ability to have a preference, AR-15 is it.

I feel my main AR is fairly well set up as a “fightin'” gun for home needs, including things like having a light on the fore-rail. The one thing I feel I is missing is a good scope/sights. I do have iron sights on it and they work well enough, but I really want to get a red-dot scope such as an Aimpoint. The reason is simple: target acquisition is faster.

So what model to get? Well, I don’t need night vision. I like the optic to be rugged. I want it to be simple (thus the Aimpoint over the EOTech) I do like the battery life as the point is to be a gun always at the ready, so turn it on, leave it on, and when/if I need the gun it’s ready to go no need to have to waste time turning on the optic; just change the batteries once a year. I was originally leaning towards the ML3 because I could get it in a 2 MOA dot. The M4 or M4S would be awesome: best design, uses a common AA battery and has amazing life, but wicked expensive. Tom Givens said all the top 3-gun competition guys were using the ML2; I don’t know why, but my guess is it’s least expensive and the 4 MOA dot is good enough in terms of precision but also a bigger dot means your eye picks it up a lot faster and thus you can get to shooting sooner. That’s some food for thought. The more I pondered that, the more I felt that yes, a 4 MOA dot would be better for my particular purpose of a home-defense/fighting rifle. I doubt I’d be taking shots beyond 100 yards. This is not a sniper/accuracy rifle, and 4″ at 100 yards is still minute-of-dead-bad-guy. If I was taking a shot inside the home, 25 yards is probably my longest shot, with more common distances maybe 10 yards give or take 5 yards.

So as of this writing, my feeling is to get the ML2. Or if for some reason I want the ML3, at least getting it in the 4 MOA configuration. I should say for the longest time I wanted the 2 MOA because I’ve got this thing about precision. People say you can buy the 2 MOA version and crank the brightness up until the dot “blooms” and then it’s bigger: you can make a 2 MOA dot a 4 MOA dot, but you can’t make a 4 MOA dot 2 MOA. There’s something to that, but when I look at a bloomed dot it’s “fuzzy” and distracting. Might be fine for some, but not for me. I can’t make the gun into an “everything” gun. It has a purpose, I need to build for that purpose and have a good rifle for that purpose, instead of a tool that’s half-assed for any/every purpose.

But…

I’m reconsidering getting any sort of sight/scope/optics.

The main reason is money, but also priority.

After taking the Combined Skills class, one thing Tom Givens made clear was that home invasions (where there’s a victim in the house) aren’t as frequent as we might think. Rather I should say, in his years of research, most violent crimes — especially where a gun is used to defend the victim — tend to happen at not-home: on the street, parking lots, etc.. Why are most of the stories of “person defends themselves with a gun” home invasion stories? Because at home is where most people in the USA have access to a gun. Something like half of the households in the USA have a gun in them. How many private citizens are legally allowed to carry a handgun on the street? About 3% of the population. Thus, when you hear the stories, you have to think of it in that context.

It’s not that I don’t want to have a good home-defense gun. But rather, I already have a sighting mechanism on my AR and it’s a good sighting mechanism. I get hits just fine with irons. But perhaps my money (the $500 it will cost for the Aimpoint plus a LaRue Tactical mount) might be better spent on a couple cases of ammo and more time at the range with my handgun. So, where to prioritize? Getting more gear for one thing, or spending the time/money on continuing to hone another thing.

I don’t know. This thought only just occurred to me this morning in the aftermath of the Combined Skills class. It’s something to think about. Not like I’ve got the money right now anyway… gotta think about braces for Oldest. 😯

Combined Skills – Done

/ hsoi

Back from from the Combined Skills weekend.

I’m too tired to blog right now. 🙂

Full review and things learned forthcoming.

Was a damn good weekend.

To tide you over, my buddy foo.c was in the class too and has some brief write-ups on day 1 and day 2.