Marko pens a piece on what gun control really does.
I’ve written about this before, in my Simple Experiment.
Guns
Front Fiber Fix
I have a set of Dawson Precision sights on one of my Springfield XD-9‘s. The front sight has a fiber optic insert. While at the range today, the insert popped out. It wasn’t really a big deal as you don’t use the fiber for aiming, just to help attract your eye. Interestingly, just seeing “white light” through the hole in the front sight was still enough to attract my eye. Funny thing too was foo.c was shooting his EMP and the roll pin holding in the front sight started to come out. Just wasn’t a good day for front sights. 🙂
When my gun came back from Springer Precision, they included the extra fibers that came with the sights. One red, one green. I had red in before, and I opted to go with green just to see if I’ll like it. I tried both out at the house just to see how my eyes felt and it didn’t make much difference, but the red did seem to have a bit more contrast… something seemed to grab my eyes a bit more, but it could be nothing more than just being used to seeing a red dot and not a green. I figure I can try the green for a while and if I don’t like it I can always switch back to red.
The cool thing? Installation is a snap. Dawson provides instructions here.
One quirky side-effect of the melt approach was I perhaps melted a little too much and left a bit of a “mushroom head” on the breech side of the fiber. That actually ended up making the dot a little bigger. I’m not sure this is a sound installation technique and it wasn’t my intention to do that, but it makes me think if green doesn’t work out that I might melt a little more of the fiber to give it just a bit bigger melt and thus a larger dot. It’s not much larger (10th of an inch? I mean, very minor), but it’s enough to be noticeable.
We’ll see how it goes.
Didn’t happen… again
My second attempt at pistol competition was a bust. The Aggies say if you do something 3 times it becomes tradition… so I hope my next effort is successful. 🙂
While most of the Austin area didn’t get rain yesterday, apparently parts of it did. One of those parts was the Austin Rifle Club. Got there this morning and the match was cancelled. They got dumped on with rain and the new action bays were muddy. Some were also full of standing water. The bays were only recently completed and I’m going to guess this was the first time they were rained upon. So while most of the drainage was good, it wasn’t perfect and this was the first time they got to see that. A lot of ARC members were standing around talking about that and how they’d have to fix the bays to remedy it. So… while perhaps the match didn’t happen, hopefully the rain meant good things for the future.
Before I left I dropped an email to foo.c to see if he wanted to join. He called me back, I missed it (don’t know how…. but the iPhone’s vibrate apparently doesn’t vibrate enough, and for whatever reason I didn’t hear the ring either). Called him from the muddy parking lot and asked if he just wanted to go to the regular bays at ARC to shoot. I swung by his house, picked him up, we came back to ARC and shot for a while.
I got to try out his new Rock Island Armory 1911. It’s not as sweet at his Wilson, but pretty darn close. Certainly makes you wonder if all the money in something like a Wilson is really worth it. Wilson had a slightly better trigger, the RIA wasn’t too bad. He also had this Sig P6 which … gah… if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all, so I’ll just stop. 🙂 Fun little beater gun, but wow, that DA/SA action is ugly and the DA pull is junkyard dog ugly.
I shot my Buck Mark a bunch. Gosh that gun is fun to shoot.
Then got some trigger time with my XD-9. The fiber popped out of the front sight. Put it back in but it popped out again and I couldn’t find it. That sucks. I’ll contact Dawson Precision in the morning. I was shooting OK. It’s evident I haven’t been to the range in a while. Dry fire all you want, in fact you should dry fire a lot. But in the end, you gotta get to the range some because you need that recoil to really make things go. Darn this ammo shortage situation… a big reason why I haven’t been to the range and only dry firing. 😦 Still, shot OK.
So, while today wasn’t the day I wanted, it was the day I needed. Happy to have gotten the trigger time. Good to hang out with a friend. I’ll try competition again some other time.
Finally going to try it
I’ve mentioned I’ve wanted to try competition shooting. I figured a good place to start was Steel Challenge type of competition. One time I was ready to go, but it didn’t happen. Now Austin Lone Star Practical Pistol Club has moved to the Austin Rifle Club because of their newly built action shooting bays.
This is the fourth Sunday of the month, which means a steel match.
I’m going to try it.
I’m going to shoot my .22 Buck Mark with iron sights (total stock factory gun). It’s the cheapest thing to shoot and I’ve got far more .22 LR ammo than anything else.
I’m excited at trying out competition for the first time. I’m a little nervous because I have no idea what to expect, and ensuring I have all the right equipment for how they like to do things. But I’m looking forward to giving this a try.
My goal? Just to shoot and have fun, get familiar with the club and people and how everything works. But if Caleb’s Shooting Sports Jargonizer is correct, that really means I want to win. 😉 Actually to win or not doesn’t matter (tho I’d love it). The real desire is to not come in last place, especially because of procedural errors, rules infractions (especially safety issues), or disqualifications. 🙂
I’ll be back….
They got off lucky
ToddG tells a story of range safety. Frankly, those guys got off easy.
Every time I take my kids to the gun range we go over the safety rules. I also tell my kids that if they see anyone doing something unsafe on the range that they need to speak up. Just because they’re a kid and the offender is an adult, that doesn’t matter. This is a matter of safety, and if a kid sees an adult being unsafe the kid has the right, duty, responsibility, and obligation to speak up and correct them. I also follow it up telling my kids to stand firm in their application of safety rules, and if the person they correct has a problem with a kid telling them what to do, to redirect the person to me or the Range Safety Officer.
Like ToddG said: range safety is everyone’s responsibility.
Man with a gun
Many gun bloggers like to post “man/woman with a gun” posts from time to time. The blogger is someone with a concealed handgun license, and the point of the posting is how they go about their daily lives — with a gun. That means they are legally carrying their gun and might go to the grocery store, thus they’ll post about a “man with a gun at the grocery store.” Or they might go to the park and post about a “man with a gun in the park.” Or maybe they had to take their kid to a birthday party and it’s “man with a gun around young children at a birthday party.” You get the idea.
As I’d read this posts I found them annoying. I’m not exactly sure why. But the most I thought about it, the more I realized that there’s a benefit in telling such a thing.
It demonstrates there are lots of people out there, normal, law-abiding people out there. These people just so happen to carry a gun, for whatever reason they choose. And nothing happens.
There’s no blood on the streets.
No one died or got hurt.
No children were harmed.
No gun spontaneously lept to life and started shooting.
And it just happened all around you. You were probably blissfully ignorant of it the whole time. It was no big deal. There was nothing to be afraid of, and there’s still nothing to be afraid of even now that you’re aware that there are folks carrying guns around you. The only thing that changed was your knowledge of the situation; it’s no more dangerous now than it was before.
Life just goes on.
Some might say if nothing happened, then that demonstrates you didn’t need a gun in the first place; things were obviously safe enough. No, not quite. The point is to say that the mere fact a man with a gun was out and about doesn’t mean bad things will happen. That just because you might be in proximity to someone with a gun, doesn’t mean you’ll die. That because someone chooses to carry a gun doesn’t mean they’re a bloodthirsty killer. But it also does mean that there are at least some people out there that understand when situations arise in life, you can handle situations better when you’re prepared for them. Furthermore, that many times the right tool make it a lot easier to solve a problem. It’s easier to hang a picture if you’ve got a hammer and a nail.
So know there are folks carrying guns all around you. The ones legally doing so? You don’t have to worry about them. The overwhelming odds are they’re a good person. Life remains good and peaceful, with the knowledge there’s sheepdogs out there.
Seeking facts
Linoge is seeking information. Click here to find out on what, and if you can contribute please do.
I am curious about this myself. I’m still figuring out where I stand on the open carry issue. There are political aspects, social aspects, tactical aspects, practical aspects. I see pros and cons of each, but still undecided on what to do as a whole. Open carry of handguns is illegal in Texas, so presently the issue doesn’t directly impact me, but maybe in the 2011 legislative session it will come up (it was possible for 2009 but didn’t happen). The questions Lingoe brings up are good ones, and answers would certainly play a part in my personal decision.
On a semi-related note, I figure if it did happen in 2011, it’d be appropriate to buy an STI Eagle 5.0 to celebrate. 😉
Pistola potable
When I was at Spec’s a little while ago, as we walked up and down the aisle’s, we saw a couple bottles of tequila.
We first noticed the rifle, just thinking it was some long weird bottle. Then we saw the pistol next to it, then realized the long bottle was actually a rifle. It’s hard to tell that in the picture, but that is what it is.
And I felt like such a geek. All I wanted to do was determine what sort of rifle and pistol they modeled the bottle after. 🙂
Wish me luck
Texas has a “sales tax holiday weekend” designed to help with back-to-school shopping.
It’s this coming weekend, Friday through Sunday.
We’ve never bothered with this. The main reason is we don’t want to deal with the crowds and chaos. And unfortunately, we fear people are going to be petty, rude, and ugly because they all want the best deals for themselves. We’ve experienced this during “big shopping weekends” before, and we just choose not to deal with it. Plus since we homeschool, we don’t always need to be on the same clock and schedule as the rest of the world.
However, we decided to give it a try this time around. The kids need clothes, we know every retailer in Texas will be stocked up and prepared for this event (I even got an email from Waco Harley-Davidson promoting this weekend), and there will be sales and lots of aggressive pricing and discounting and so on as retailers jockey to attract customers. Then the sales tax alleviation on select items. The kids need the clothing they need so buy it now or later, they still need it. If we buy it now, I expect we’ll be able to lower our total bill. By how much I don’t know yet, but I expect any reduction in the overall bill will be welcome. 🙂
Being the planner I am coupled with my desire to get in and get out as fast as possible, we’ve figured out all that the kids need. We know what pants, shoes, socks, skirts, shirts, underwear, and whatever else they may need. We figured out what sizes of everything to get to minimize the slow down that comes with fitting rooms. Plus we figured out quantities. I think that’s a key factor at keeping cost controlled… you know you need 5 shirts, you get 5 shirts instead of saying “gosh at this price, we can get 7 shirts” which then just jacks up the total bill. If last night before you saw the prices 5 shirts was enough, then today after seeing the prices 5 shirts is still enough.
And going with the fact we aren’t on the same clock as the rest of the world, the plan is to go at the time we feel will have the smallest crowds: first thing Friday morning. Most people will have to be working, most people aren’t morning people. So if we can be on the road at 8 AM and done by lunch, awesome.
The geek in me is also wondering if the iPhone will come into play. If I’ll be able to comparison shop, look up prices, product reviews, or any other sort of on-the-spot information gathering.
Finally, I suspect there will probably be a man with a gun wandering through all these crowds, through all these retail establishments, being around lots of children…. and I’ll betcha nothing will come of it. 😉
So, onwards we go. Hopefully tomorrow won’t suck. 🙂
Stuff From Hsoi 
