An article about myths in the use of force.
I must admit, back in my earlier days I believed the myths. I mean, the media keeps feeding this stuff to us and the media never lies or distorts or furthers an agenda, right? They always present well-researched, correct, unbiased, and factual information, right?
Geez… I bought a Nyko Perfect Shot a few weeks ago and didn’t get to play with it until now. That’s how busy my life has been.
So how is it?
An interesting set of photos of some military weapons, buried about 70 years ago and somewhat recently excavated.
Can anyone identify what the rifle is?
I’ve heard Master Harmon say this before, but he brought it up again in yesterday’s seminar, and it struck me deeper than it has in the past. I figure this is because there’s a growing harmony in the various aspects of my life, and it’s great when things flow and harmonize this way. Let me explain.
As I mentioned previously, I’ve been wanting to get into action and competition shooting. The only bummer about it is there’s no means for this close to Austin. Anything is at least a good 1-2 hour drive outside of town. That’s not too bad tho, as it’ll make for a nice motorcycle ride.
However, as of a few hours ago this is going to change.
The Austin Rifle Club just voted to begin construction on five “action shooting” bays for IPSC, IDPA, SASS, NRA AP, Training courses, organized practice, and other such uses. All this was was the vote, there’s still much work to be done. But with the vote at least it can move forward. This is great news!
I have been wanting to join ARC for some time but haven’t been able to due to scheduling conflicts. You must take a range safety course which is offered only once per month and I just haven’t been able to make any of those monthly meetings. 😦 But this gives me more motivation to work it into my schedule!
Updated: Here’s the official word from ARC. Looks like it’ll be happening soon. I’m going to have to work the enrollment meeting into my schedule.
Having previously written about dry fire, it was a gem to come across this blog entry about “live but reduced fire” practice. That is, practicing with a reduced load, such as a .22 or Airsoft. (h/t to Tam)
We’re all living in a time where it’s hard to find ammo, and when we find it we tend to want to save it because 1. it cost us a lot to get the ammo, 2. we don’t know when we’ll find more and if we do if we’ll be able to afford it! So shooting a .22 is very appealing right now. Heck, it plays a small part in my decision to do Steel Challenge style shooting as my first formal competition.
What got me about Michael Bane’s blog post tho was the undertone that what helps your skills isn’t going to the range and throwing a lot of lead downrange. What helps your skills is all the work you do off the range, such as dry fire. Dry fire is going to take you furthest in building your shooting skills. What dry fire lacks is the boom and the recoil. This is where Michael’s suggestion of “subcaliber practice” becomes useful, because even shooting a .22 you get some noise and recoil, which can help you build a stronger foundation and reduce the effects of greater noise and recoil for “standard caliber practice.”
A very interesting read, no doubt.
Makes me want to go buy a few (hundred) more bricks of .22. 🙂
For some time I’ve wanted to try my hand at shooting competitions. The main reason I haven’t? Scheduling. Things have been happening lately tho that have spurred me to get off my duff and finally try competition shooting. I still have to get my schedule happy, but at least my desire to do competition has moved from passing thought to “OK, let’s seriously consider this.”
As you can see here and here, the Austin and greater Central Texas area provides for a lot of competitions. Shotguns, rifles, carbines, pistols, combinations of them (e.g .3-gun), and just various types. So where to begin? I figure I’m going to start with handgun-only competitions, because that keeps it simple to start. But even with handgun-only there’s still many things to try. So I asked my mentor what to do and he suggested I start with Steel Challenge-based competition. There’s the ALSPPC that sounds like a good group to get started with.
I think steel will be a good way to start. It’s a simpler competition, by design, which is good for breaking into the world of competition shooting (less to worry about). Given the skills I’m working on and need to improve upon, Steel Challenge seems right up the alley: distances 7-35 yards, every shot must count, speed is important but accuracy more important (slow hit better than a fast miss). It really seems exactly the sort of thing I need right now. An additional benefit is you can shoot it with a .22 rimfire handgun… given the state of ammo today, that’s a great thing. Furthermore, kids can shoot! If Daugther eventually wants to try, she can! As I was researching for this post, I came across videos of a Tori Nonaka, who appears to be a 13-year old girl shooting Steel and IPSC competitions and being quite good at it:
I watch her videos and am not just impressed with her shooting, but I can’t help but think of my own Daugther and wondering if that might be her someday. 🙂
But back to steel… here’s some resources:
So, at this point I’ve got more reading, practice, and preparation to do. But as soon as my schedule will allow me, I’m going to try shooting steel.
Last weekend was the annual Polite Society conference. Massad Ayoob has a write-up of the event.
James R. Rummel has an entry about how to store a handgun kept for self-defense. This actually started as a comment on his blog but got long enough I thought it warranted its own blog entry.
Overall I agree with James:
But I disagree with what appears to be his recommended choice of storage: either in a box under lock and key, or using a cable lock.
Stuff From Hsoi 