Guns

On a home defense tool – part 4

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If you haven’t read part 1, part 2, and part 3, please go read them before you read part 4.

 

Through the joys of blogging and “suggested links” I stumbled upon a 3-part home defense series from Caleb/Ahab. Here are links to his part 1, part 2, and part 3. These dovetail perfectly into where I left off in my part 3, that equipment is important, but skills and mindset are more important.

I took a fantastic training course called Street & Vehicle Tactics, from InSights Training Center. When gun people take gun classes they want to shoot guns! But this class had no shooting whatsoever. Yes there was a lot of physicality and moving about, but most of what was taught was about mindset and tactics — it was all about using your gray matter. The course talks about Priorities of Survival:

  1. Awareness and preparedness
  2. Tactics
  3. Skill
  4. Equipment

This list is in order, and notice that equipment is at the bottom of the list. This does show that equipment does matter: if you have unreliable equipment, ineffective equipment, it’s going to affect your chances of survival. What has a greater impact on your chances of survival tho are the other listed factors. In fact, there’s a level of “force multiplication” involved here. What this means is as you go up the priorities list, your chances of survival multiply. Equipment gives you the least multiplier, awareness/preparedness gives you the greatest and could even compensate for all the others. The items at the top of the priority list will take you much further than the items at the bottom, and the more/better you can have of all the items, all the better for your chances of survival.

Going back to Caleb’s articles, let’s look at parts 1 and 3. In his part 1 Caleb discusses some good first lines of defense: checking the outside of your home and setting it up defensively (trimming back bushes, well-lit, fences); minding your doors and windows (solid, locked); having an alarm system (deterrent, notification system); the utility of a purposely-trained big dog; other things such as flashlights and mobile phones. What is this? awareness and preparedness. It’s being aware of your home situation: these bushes block this ground-level window, this tree next to the house comes close to that second-story window, there’s a dark spot over by the trash cans. It’s preparing your home: let’s trim back that bush, let’s get those tree limbs trimmed back, let’s install some floodlights around the trash can area, let’s repair the fence for Fido’s sake.  

In his part 3, Caleb talks about “the plan”. He discusses thinking ahead of time about what to do in a home-invasion situation. What to do, where to go, what role each member of the household has in the event — including children, where boundaries are. What is this? This is preparedness, and tactics. He has made a plan, it was made ahead of time, it could be thought through, and practiced. He is prepared. He has discussed the tactics: he arms and hunkers down, Mrs. Caleb removes herself from the line of fire and uses the mobile phone to dial 911 and report everything. A simple plan, but the tactics are worked out head of time. 

In his part 2, Caleb does talk about equipment. While he and I have arrived at a different set of equipment, that’s the equipment that works for him, and he offers some interesting alternative suggestions. One thing I would add is to look around your home and see what could be used in a pinch. For instance, I have a Vaughan SuperBar which would make a pretty ugly weapon.

The take-home message from this part of my series? While we love tools and equipment because it’s fun, tangible, and we just like tinkering with and talking about cool gadgets, it’s really the least important part of home defense or any type of self-defense. Your mindset and mental conditioning are the most important thing, and the more you can invest there, the further you will go.

On a home defense tool – part 3

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If you have not read “On a home defense tool” (part 1) I suggest you go back and read that first. After reading that, you should then read part 2, then come back and read this part 3.

 

While some may discount The Box O’ Truth (e.g. exactly how scientific is it), there’s still some merit in what was presented — it’s still food for thought, especially regarding things like buckshot patterning. So on the topic of ammo, not only do we want something good enough to stop the bad guys, but we also want something that minimizes risk of over-penetration especially in a home-defense situation.

The reality is, if you want it to penetrate the bad guy enough to make them stop, it’s going to have some risk of over-penetration (e.g. ability to go through common household walls). But depending on your ammo choice you can have greater or reduced issues to deal with.

So let’s see what one of the top resources has to say about choice in .223 ammo. Or from Troy & Dr. Gary Roberts. Now granted, what they write there is .223/5.56x45mm specific, but based on part 1 and part 2 of this series you can see where my bias lies. Nevertheless, let’s look at what Dr. Gary Roberts, LCDR, USNR, Stanford University Medical Center. Dr. Roberts has performed much published research into this matter and is a well-respected man in this field.

Given the widespread availability of this information for over a decade, I am shockingly surprised to read about the “overpenetration” with “high powered assault rifles”. In this day and age anyone who is spouting this BS needs to be horsewhipped… Several respected organizations have done structural wall testing, including the FBI, CHP, and IWBA. In our IWBA and CHP testing, replicas of standard construction interior walls were fabricated using two pieces of 1/2″ thick dry wall cut in 12″ x 24″ segments and mounted four inches apart using 2 x 4″ fir studs and 1.5″ dry wall screws. Five rounds of each load were first fired into bare gelatin to serve as controls. Then 5 shots of each load were shot through interior wall segments into gelatin blocks placed a set distance behind the intermediate barriers–various distances have been tested, typically ranging from 1 to 10 feet.

Generally, common service caliber JHP bullets failed to expand and had very deep, excessive penetration after passing through the interior wall, due to plugging of the hollow point. With the hollow point plugged, the bullets performed nearly identically to FMJ pistol bullets. The terminal performance of the 12 ga. 00 buckshot and slugs was not altered by passing through interior wall replicas, with penetration and deformation nearly identical with their performance in bare gelatin. Likewise, .308 rounds were not usually effected by the presence of an interior wall intermediate barrier.

With one exception, the majority of the 5.56 mm/.223 loads, including M855 62 gr “green-tip” FMJ, which were fired through interior walls demonstrated either minimal changes in terminal performance compared with bare gelatin or reduced penetration. The major exception were 55 gr M193 style FMJ projectiles which exhibited minimal fragmentation and deformation after first passing through interior wall replicas and hence penetrated deeper than in bare gel. Since all of the 5.56 mm/.223 bullets fired through the interior wall had significantly less penetration than 9 mm, .40 S&W, .45 ACP, and 12 ga. shotgun projectiles which were fired through an interior wall, stray 5.56 mm/.223 bullets seem to offer a reduced risk of injuring innocent bystanders and an inherent reduced risk of civil litigation in situations where bullets miss their intended target and enter or exit structures. As such, 5.56mm/.223 caliber weapons may be safer to use in CQB situations and crowded urban environments than service caliber handguns or 12 ga. weapons.

Obviously, it is important to keep in mind that purpose built barrier blind 5.56 mm/.223 projectiles, such as the 55 & 62 gr Federal Tactical JSP’s and the Nosler 60 gr Partition, will offer deeper penetration than fragmenting designs and may exit.
 

So as you can see, there’s something to be said for 5.56/.223 loads in a home-defense situation. And what fires those loads? Generally, rifles. And what’s generally going to be a better rifle for a home-defense situation, with corners, narrow hallways, darkened rooms? Your AR-style platform, or perhaps an “M4-gery” because it’s a bit more compact.

While ammo selection is certainly important, while your choice of hardware is certainly important, I’d argue there’s something more important: a proper warrior mindset combined with proper training/instruction and practice.

 

Continue to Part 4.

On a home defense tool – part 2

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If you have not read the first part of On a home defense tool, you should read that first so the following has context and makes more sense.

The following comes from John Holschen. The words and such are John’s, I’ve merely reformatted for HTML.

I’d like to share a few thoughts considering defensive long guns for your consideration.

I’ll start out by saying that a shotgun is my last choice to procure for employment as a defensive long gun. This is because:

  1. It is heavy.
  2. It’s manual of arms is relatively complex.
  3. It’s recoil is more difficult to manage for quick follow up shots (as might be required for multiple threats).
  4. It’s ammunition supply is relatively limited (this is not a critical factor in a typical home defense situation but it could become one in case of large scale civil disturbance).

Many people believe these drawbacks are offset due to various factors (which I believe are largely misconceptions), such as:

  1. “You don’t have to aim a shotgun just point it in the direction of the bad guy and pull the trigger.” (This is often an allusion to the fact that an untrained person will be using the shotgun.)
    • Reality – At the “across the room” distances likely to be found in most houses the shot column has not opened up significantly (especially with “Buck” sized shot.) Therefore you must aim.
    • Reality — Due to numbers 2 and 3 above, the shotgun actually requires more training for many/most people to shoot well when compared to a rifle.
    • Reality — The very people that would benefit most from additional training (those with small stature and/or less upper body strength) don’t want to train much with a shotgun because of the recoil and the weight.
  2. “Just the sound/appearance of a shotgun with dissuade attackers.”
    • Reality — In many situations it will not be tactically feasible to demonstrate either the sound or appearance of your weapon prior to using it.
    • Reality — Many/most bad guys aren’t switched-on enough for the type of gun you are using to even register with them.
    • And ultimately — I’m not willing to potentially decrease my effectiveness to potentially increase my bluffing power.
  3. “The shotgun is the most versatile defensive/survival weapon.”
    • Reality — Yes it is versatile; if by that you mean you could use it to hunt birds and up to deer sized game animals with the right loads. However, I suggest that people make an honest assessment of how likely it is that they will need to hunt birds with their primary defensive weapon. Also please keep in mind that versatility does have trade-offs as mentioned above. (I won’t even discuss gas rounds, bean-bag rounds, bird-bombs, Taser rounds, etc., other than to say that private citizens show not even consider these as factors in choosing their primary defensive weaponry).
  4. “The shotgun is less likely to over penetrate.”
    • Reality — A 5.56 mm rifle, with the proper ammunition, penetrates less through typical household construction than does 00 Buck.

I started by stating that the shotgun was my last choice to procure as a defensive weapon for my use. IT is even lower on my list of desired weapons for my wife and (adult) daughters to use. So what do I recommend for a defensive long gun? I suppose it will come as no surprise to most of you that my suggestions are:

  1. A semi-auto rifle (read AR)
  2. A semi-auto rifle (read AR)
  3. A semi-auto rifle (read AR)

If I absolutely could not have a semi-auto rifle I would rather have a pump-action rifle (or a lever action rifle) than a shotgun.

Just my (somewhat informed) opinions.

Again, let me state that these are merely opinions. However, they are informed opinions from people with solid backgrounds to shape those opinions. In the end, pick what is right for your situation and context, get training, practice, and be prepared.

 

Continue to Part 3.

On Wrists and Recoil

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Ahab has a piece on grip and recoil management. This has been one of the things I’ve been focusing on heavily in my practice. I can tell you without question it makes a huge difference. You go around enough and you find various suggestions on just how tightly to grip, and you should certainly try them all. I have, and I’ve found that nothing gives me greater recoil management and faster follow-up shots than griping hard.

I wanted to add a few things on wrists and grip.

  1. Whenever you grab your gun, always grip it hard. The biggest place to work on this is during dry-fire practice. We might slack on the grip because in dry-fire there is no recoil to manage. But by always gripping hard every time you grip your gun you 1. build up the grip strength, 2. get your body in the habit of “grip gun, grip hard” so that it’s just natural to grip hard. If you get in the habit of gripping weak, you may grip weak when you least want to.
  2. Make sure you engage all of your fingers, especially your pinky. How do we hold something delicate, like a champagne flute? with pinky extended. How do we hold something we need to keep a hold of, like swinging a hammer? with our full hand and all our fingers. Try it right now. Ball your fingers in a fist and clench. Now really concentrate on adding your pinky into that clench and you’ll likely find yourself gripping just a bit harder.
  3. On that notion, an interesting concept from my empty-hand martial arts study is the notion of “ki finger” (or maybe also called “ki grip” or “ki finger grip”). Watch the video embedded in that post. How that looks like your strong/shooting hand, eh? Believe it or not, you can actually exercise a great deal of your grip strength from your last 3 fingers and can almost ignore your index finger freeing it to do other things, such as work a trigger. The upshot here, when you’re thinking about your grip, experiment with focusing your grip on just your last 3 fingers (middle, ring, pinky) and grip hard with just them. It may or may not work for you, but it’s worth experimenting with.
  4. Always work to improve your grip. This doesn’t mean just when you grip the gun but any time you grip anything. This may not be gripping something hard, but at least ensuring a good grip. For instance, if you carry your groceries in sacks with handles, don’t let the handles droop to the end of your fingertrips — have a fully closed grip. If your grip is starting to fail, of course don’t sacrifice your groceries, but try to hold onto things as long as you can. Your muscles will work long after your brain says to stop, so hang on a bit longer to increase the muscle strength and endurance. If you want, throw in some wrist curls with the groceries too. 🙂
  5. Use it or lose it. If you want to develop the wrist strength, you must continually do so. To perhaps work on it today then not again for weeks isn’t going to develop anything except a poor work ethic. If you work on it for a while then give it up, you will likely lose some of the developed strength and endurance because now your muscles lack that increased workload. Our bodies like to maintain a state of “only what it needs” (efficency), so if it doesn’t need phonebook tearing wrist strength it won’t maintain that on its own. You must work to maintain it.
  6. As for specific exercises, there are many things you can do. Google is your friend.

The Real Story on So-Called “Assault Weapons”

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You generally have more success to argue based on facts than emotion. So, let’s lay out the facts on these so-called “assault weapons.”

Brady Campaign, yes they are merely like hunting rifles. Go look at the actual mechanics of the action. Compare and contrast, look at actual firearms… we’ll wait.

And it’s not (just) about hunting. Maybe it’s about keeping my children safe.

(h/t to Ahab)

Keepin’ on

/ hsoi

I’ve always found Xavier’s blog to be filled with good stuff… one of the better blogs overall out there.

Yesterday he writes about “On Keeping On Keeping On” and I have to agree with him. One reason I became an NRA Certified Instructor was to help people learn about firearms. I changed, I know others can too. It’s difficult to preach change to a large group and expect change to happen, but working one-on-one with folks you can speak directly to their needs, address their concerns. I won’t lie, I don’t bullshit; honesty is the only way to go about things. I’ll do my best to avoid politics, but there’s inheriently a political component to this. Still, by going one-on-one you can gauge the audience and tailor the message best (e.g. you can avoid politics unless asked; if they’re for sport, you can go that route; if they’re for self-defense you can go that route; etc.). If at the end of it all they’re not going to “see it my way” that’s ok… at least if they were willing to engage in the conversation, and that’s something. That they were willing to let a seed be sown, even if it doesn’t sprout today, maybe it will sometime later.

We cannot hold a grudge. We cannot let our anger be our driving force, especially if it closes us off. Not only does that make us look bad, but it won’t help bring new people into the fold. Think about it. If a sheep sees an angry dog bearing big teeth, it doesn’t matter if that angry dog is a wolf or a sheepdog — it’s still a big predator with teeth that the sheep is going to be afraid of and avoid. So you sheepdogs, think about how to win the trust of those sheep. How to better present yourself, how to better and honestly gain their trust and realize that we’re The Good Guys. And perhaps, just perhaps, be able to teach those sheep how to show some teeth as well.

Texas Concealed Carry on Campus bills introduced

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Just read the word that SB 1164 and HB 1893 have been introduced to the Texas State Legislature.

If you live in Texas, contact your State Senator and State Representative and let them know your opinion on the matter.

Unclear on the concept

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It sounds like this is one women’s ignorance, so let’s not get too riled up over this. (h/t Xavier). I get the feeling she’s hung up on the pictures and the fact it’s an NRA program and isn’t looking at what’s actually being taught (the article mentions that in 10 years of the school district’s safety curriculum this is the first complaint they’ve ever received).

From the article:

“At 5 years old, anytime you tell a child not to touch something, that’s exactly what they do. It’s in their nature to be curious and to touch and handle things,” said Howe. 

Yes, Ms. Howe, it is in the nature of a 5 year old to be curious and touch things. That’s exactly what the Eddie Eagle program aims to deal with. “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.”  It’s not teaching gun handling; in fact, it is explictly teaching not to touch at all!. It’s not teaching kids how to be killers. Eddie Eagle is teaching safety. I spoken about this before. Like it or don’t, a child has potential to come across a gun sometime in their life. Wouldn’t you want your child to know how to safely deal with the situation?

The Garland, Texas school district includes Eddie Eagle as a part of their safety curriculum. According to the article the Garland I.S.D.’s safety curriculum also teaches about life jackets, bicycle safety, car safety, dealing with strangers. Why should we want our children to be ignorant? Don’t we send them to school to learn? If we can teach them how to be safe with something, why wouldn’t we want to do that?  Of course now Ms. Howe’s child knows to “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.”… the child can’t unlearn what has been learned. But if Ms. Howe thinks this is such horrible knowledge for her child to have, she’s welcome to teach her child differently: “Go head, pick it up, don’t tell anyone, play with it, bring it to school and show your friends.”  Logic need not apply.

Now Ms. Howe, if your 5 year old always disobeys you then that’s your problem as a parent. If you tell your child not to touch or do something and they disobey you and still touch or do it, then well… you’ve got larger parenting issues that need to be worked on.

 

Updated: Sebastian mentions it as well but gosh folks… we probably shouldn’t be extending her 15 minutes.

Range Report

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As I mentioned previously, I got my XD-9 back so of course I had to go to the range to try it out. Took Oldest Child with me.

The range was rather busy today (one reason I prefer to go on mid-week mornings), so consequently I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do to really try things out. Brought the 10/22 for Oldest, set him up at 25 yards and let him go to town. You can see his results (no, the picture isn’t upside down, I stapled the target upside down since I was in a hurry). Overall, not bad. He’s certainly improving.

One issue we were up against is the scope was loose; actually, the base is loose. So, I’m going to have to fix that. I was having him work on fundamentals: body position, focusing on the crosshairs (since there’s no front sight), good trigger press, and good follow-through. That’s the toughest thing, getting him to follow-through and not go “bangdidihitit?”. As you can see from the grouping, he’s off to the left. This could be a bit of trigger slap (I did work with him a bit on a better trigger press, looking for the “surprise break”), but given how very consistent he was on this and other targets, I’m presently going to chalk it up to the scope being loose and thus off zero. I know it was frustrating for him to not “aim middle of red dot, hit middle of red dot”, but it was a good lesson in learning that it’s more about the grouping than always hitting the middle of the dot (tho yes, that’s important). The wiggly scope gave a good and digestible excuse for today, and this allows to lead into a greater discussion of things like trajectory, zeroing sights, height-over-bore, and so on. Stuff for later. Right now, my main focus is for him to work on the fundamentals, see success, see himself improving, and enjoy what he’s doing. So far, so good. I’m happy with his progress.

 

As for me, again because the range was rather busy I just set up 2 target stands and put 5 6″ paper plates on each stand. No defensive or other “real” shooting, this was to be nothing more than a basic running of the gun to see how she now is. I set them up at 15 yards, which was good because I need to work on 15-25 yard (i.e. greater than 7 yards) shooting, and with these new sights I knew I could get the accuracy I couldn’t get with the XS Sights (the paper plates would disappear completely behind the big front dot). Plus given the way the range was set up, for Oldest to shoot at 25 yards and for me to be next to him, I had to then shoot at 15 yards… so really, it all worked out.

How did the gun do? Better than me. 🙂 The trigger is really tight, in the good way. I will have to do a lot of dry-fire practice to get used to the trigger. My “muscle memory” wanted to have a normal XD trigger, travelling and feeling like a stock XD trigger does, so things felt odd and I wasn’t shooting as well as I normally do, but that’s to expected. I couldn’t help but be impressed with the trigger; again, it’s so tight, and yes I’d like to try it side-by-side with a good 1911 trigger to compare. Bottom line? I just need a lot of dry-fire with it and get used to it before I expend any more ammo at the range.

The Dawson Sights. You have to realize, while it’s February, the temperature today is in the high-80’s. It’s bright, sunny, I put on sunscreen before going to the range. This is an abnormal day weather-wise, but still a great one. And with all that sunlight, the fiber optic front sight just shined like a beacon. You couldn’t help but see it. Thinking back on it, the fact I couldn’t “see” the rear sight is testimony to a cleaner sight picture. As well, the wider notch (well at least the combination of the front and rear made the rear notch wide) well… everything just lines up. Your eye gets pulled to that front sight, which is what you want to focus on, and there’s nothing else to clutter the sight picture. But the other parts that must be in the sight picture are there and are there only enough for you to do what you need to do with them. The greater “whitespace” on either side of the front post might just be thousandths of an inch wider than stock, but it makes such a difference to my eyes in terms of picking up the sight picture and knowing what it is and thus what may need to be corrected to have an ideal sight picture. It’s hard to explain, but this sight picture feels like the sight picture I want. There’s nothing to distract me, my eyes go where they should go and not where they shouldn’t. And my accuracy is far far better than they were with the XS Sights. Again, I’ll need more dry-fire practice with them, but so far I really like them. 

One thing I want to do is head to the local indoor range to get a better feel for the sights. The indoor range has the targets on a track so it’s very easy to adjust distance from 0 to 100 yards, and to do so without having to get the entire firing line to stop while you dance around with targets. This way I can get a better idea how the sights are zeroed and how they perform at various distances.

All in all, I’m pleased with how the custom work turned out. The gun itself seems good, it’s now just me that needs some work.

In related news, I ordered a SmartCarry and it came in the mail today. Can’t wait to try it out.

Updated: Talking about the day over supper with the family, I remembered a few things:

  1. Oldest got to learn about malfunctions! He had at least one stovepipe, 3 duds. 
  2. I kept working on that Todd Jarrett “grip 20% harder” technique. Man, that works. But I still have problems with my grip: one I know what to do about, one I don’t. The one I know what to do about is to just get a stronger grip… building those muscles up. The one I don’t know what to do about… it’s getting my left (non-shooting) hand to really hang on. Eventually my right (shooting) hand just works its way out of the left. I have felt that I need to thicken the grip up a bit so my big hands can better fit, leaves a little more “empty space” on the grip so the heel of my left hand can rest more “meat” on the grip (shooting an M&P with the big backstrap was great in this regard). Or maybe it’s just a matter of grip strength. 🙂

Back from Springer Precision

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I sent a Springfield XD-9 to Springer Precision to get some custom work done. FedEx man just came by and dropped off my package. I’m happy!

The trigger job is fantastic. The trigger is now is about as efficient as one can get. It feels amazing in dry fire. I’d like to try it out side-by-side with my buddy’s Wilson 1911 to see how the triggers compare. I’m sure the 1911’s will be better, but this feels like it’ll be about as close as one can get.

The Dawson Precision sights. I got the front fight as a red fiber optic 0.100″. It’s a little narrower than I expected, but the red dot still shines brightly. I also like the slightly wider notch on the all-black fixed rear sight (I think it’s 0.125″ but I could be wrong… I’ll have to ask). The front/rear combination lets in a lot of light around the front sight (compared to the stock sights) and again in dry fire my eyes seem to like that a lot more. Heck, even taking my glasses off (and my eyesight is horribly near-sighted) I can roughly make out the sight picture because I can see that light coming in. This’ll be interesting to experiment with.

And then, got a factory cleanup. I’m not sure all the little details that were done, but I can see a lot of polished pieces, gun oil everywhere. Slide even felt different to me first time I racked it out of the box. Working the gun felt smoother.

Now I just need to get to the range to try it out…. 

I will say I’m glad I got a lot of work done at once. The shipping costs were ridiculous (you must ship overnight priority), but you can contact Scott ahead of time and he’s able to give a discount, which helps but still overnight for such a “heavy” package is crazy. If you’re thinking of doing this, just make sure you spend more on the work than on shipping!

Also, turnaround was pretty good. I dropped it off at a shipping facility on the 17th, and I have it back today (10 days end to end).

More later….

 

Updated: Got to the range.