Guns

AAR – BP1 @ KR Training 4 Aug 2012

/ hsoi

With the Texas summer settling into full swing, classes are still being held but with an eye on the heat. So this past Saturday KR Training held only a Basic Pistol 1 class.

A highlight for me was seeing the TXGunGeek and misbeHaven, whom I haven’t seen in a while. Was good to see them.

Class was full and demographics were varied. About half the class was women. Ages ranged from a teenager there was his father, on up. Various ethnicities and backgrounds too. Some may choose to stereotype gun-owners as old, white, redneck men — they only show their ignorance when doing so.

Class ran well, tho shuffled around a bit in an effort to get folks out on the range before it got too hot. I didn’t see how long we were out there, but it felt like it went on longer than usual. A good thing tho, helping people try a bunch of different guns.

I found myself speaking a great deal about gun fit, and had an interesting observation at my station. I had a different set of guns: Glock 19, Glock 22, Springfield XD-9 5″, M&P-9 full-sized, M&P9 Shield, M&P-22, and a J-frame. On the one hand, I felt like I was shilling for Smith & Wesson. But the more interesting thing was showing off gun fit to the students. I’d look at the size of their hands and length of their fingers and put them on a particular gun, then have them pick up another one and compare. There were a lot of people with hands of just the right size that the Glock would be too big, so I’d put them onto the Shield and it would fit but might be almost too small. Then put them onto the M&P (medium backstrap) and it would be a “just right” fit. Not only do I hope this impressed upon students that if you pick a Glock or an XD or an M&P, they’re mostly going to wind up being the same in terms of reliability, capacity, etc., but fine details of ergonomics can often end up being the final and important factor in your choice.

Further reinforcing this, TXGunGeek has big hands and the XD fits him a lot better. While the XD is generally alright for me, the way the frame is cut is, for lack of a better term, just a hair more angular and brick-like. Due to the way I’m constructed, my trigger finger would rub the frame just enough to push everything left. But without changing a thing in my shooting style, the M&P doesn’t exhibit the problem because the frame has just a slight enough contour difference that my finger doesn’t rub. Little things like this end up mattering, and you cannot be afraid to keep working at it to seek the equipment that’s right and works best for you. Buy a gun, if it doesn’t work, sell it, try another. But then, once you settle upon your equipment, move beyond it — it’s just stuff, nothing to get too ego-attached to. Then begins the work to build skill, and onwards up the pyramid.

The day was short but significant. And I got to have lunch at the Elm Creek Cafe just up TX-21 from the range. Folks, that’s some good home cookin’, and a great way to round things off.

Look! Data!

/ hsoi

I saw this graphic floating around the Int3rw3bs the past few days:

I didn’t have time to look further into it to know if there was anything actually sound behind that data or was just someone with access to Photoshop and an agenda.

Turns out someone actually did the math.

The average number of people killed in mass shootings when stopped by police is 14.3

The average number of people killed in a mass shooting when stopped by a civilian is 2.3.

That’s pretty telling on many levels. And you should go read the article backing up the statistic because it appears he did his best to take a proper sample. I admit I don’t have the time to replicate his study, so I’m just trusting the guy.

The big take-home is you cannot rely upon the police to protect you. All LEO’s I personally know do believe in “to protect and serve”, but none of them (or any of Austin PD or Travis Co. Sheriff or Texas State Troopers) are here right now to protect or serve me. I’ve seen APD response time at best to be about 5 minutes, and while that’s awesome response time, 5 minutes is a VERY long time when bad things are happening to you.

But who is here right now that can do something about it? You are.

Look at the recent story of Samuel Williams, the 71-year old man that drew his concealed handgun when two thugs came to rob an Internet cafe. Where were the police? Who was the first responder? Samuel Williams.

How about Kelvedon Hatch, the convenience store in Essex that foiled a robbery attempt of his store by throwing cases of beer at the robber? There were no police, and there was no successful robbery either.

This isn’t so much about guns as it is about accepting that putting the responsibility for  your own safety into someone else’s hands may be acceptable in some particular circumstances, but ultimately only you can and must be responsible for your safety. When people are willing to be thusly responsible, look at how much better things turn out? Sure, bad things start to happen, but they get cut off before they can become horrible events. When good people are legally crippled, when good people don’t do anything for themselves or their fellow man, look how bad things can become.

In the end, the tool may enable and enhance a person’s ability to perform work, but it’s still ultimately about the person. None of us want to see tragic events happen, but we must consider careful what roads will help us minimize the chances of these events happening, and when they do happen, minimizing the damage done. Knee-jerk reactions based upon fear and emotion are not sound ways to make policy. Look at facts, look at data. Truth always comes out, and we suffer less the sooner we accept it.

 

2012-08-03 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, Day 5, shooter’s choice.

I can do whatever I want today (other than nothing). Given my recent increase in shooting my BUG and seeing what I’m seeing there, I opted to do the basic routine but with my S&W 442.

  1. 20 reps of wall drill from extension 2H
  2. 5 reps of wall drill from extension SHO
  3. 5 reps of wall drill from extension WHO
  4. 20 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H
  5. 5 reps of wall drill from press-out SHO
  6. 5 reps of wall drill from press-out WHO

The main focus was getting on the trigger faster.

All in all, not hard to do… I think it’s a mental thing as to why I’m going slow. That I know it’s harder to press the trigger: heavier, longer trigger; lighter gun; smaller, harder to grip gun. So the press of that trigger is going to be harder to do, so go slower to ensure the sights aren’t disturbed and the trigger not slapped.  But even just letting myself go “at speed” today, I’m still not sure if It was good enough because the sights are bad enough and the grip angle is just slightly different (more downward cant needed). So… hard to tell. What might be good for me to try tomorrow is some live fire with the snub and just press it out fast and get on the trigger fast and see what I see. If what I see live matches what I see dry, and of course I’m getting acceptable hits, then I’ll know what to keep looking for in dry practice as acceptable visual feedback.

2012-08-02 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, Day 4 (basic routine)

  1. 20 reps of wall drill from extension 2H
  2. 5 reps of wall drill from extension SHO
  3. 5 reps of wall drill from extension WHO
  4. 20 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H
  5. 5 reps of wall drill from press-out SHO
  6. 5 reps of wall drill from press-out WHO

This session went really well. I’m focusing on maintaining “the string” of the eye-target line and bringing the gun and sights right up into it. It’s a fine-tuned change that’s difficult to convey here, but I know what I’m after. Plus as always, working on getting on the trigger sooner, faster, and without slapping it. All strings were done “at speed”, and I can see some improvement… or maybe today was just a good day. 😉

For me the bottom line is having the discipline to do this every day. I don’t recall the exact statistic but it’s something like to just maintain your level of skill you have to practice a couple of times a week. If you want to improve, you have to practice more. If you practice less, expect your skills to degrade. I know I’ve been at a plateau for some time, so I expect with dry practice 5x a week and getting more regular range time (due to the structure of KRT classes this summer), I expect things should be well and in order.

Hey…. Tom Givens is coming back to the area in March 2013, and I want to be awesome.

2012-08-01 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, Day 3, retention

  1. 10 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H
  2. 10 reps draw and fire from retention, slow
  3. 10 reps draw and fire from retention, 3/4 speed
  4. 5 reps draw and fire from retention while stepping L, 3/4 speed
  5. 5 reps draw and fire from retention while stepping R, 3/4 speed
  6. 10 reps beginning at full extension, draw back to retention, and fire, 3/4 speed, 2H
  7. 10 reps wall drill from press-out 2H (not standard part of TLG’s routine)
  8. 10 reps wall drill from press-out 2H 3/4 speed (not standard part of TLG’s routine)

It was good to work retention. We do a retention drill at the end of Defensive Pistol Skills 1 and it’s good to get practice on that drill. #6 is a new one on me tho.

I added some more wall drills at the end because that’s a fundamental skill and I think one good to end on. I am trying to pick up my speed without sacrificing good hits… watch that front sight, no dipping! I’m really working on trying to work at faster speeds and not slapping the trigger… but I still get more front sight dips that I care for. It’s a combination of loose/inconsistent grip, and too much trigger finger. I’m also playing a bit with my finger placement, but I think that may be a red herring… that I’m trying to fine-tune something that isn’t a relevant part of the present equation. Hard to say at this point tho.

But they never malfunction, right?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

With all the gun-related and concealed-carry-related chatter going on recently, I’ve been seeing more of the old debate about revolver vs. semi-auto. And it’s the same old reasons dragged out to justify “my choice is superior”.

Some of the typical ones to justify the revolver have to do with the bulletproof (pardon the pun) reliability of a revolver.

O RLY?

At the recent Defensive Pistol Skills BUG class, Karl was shooting his Charter Arms snub. Karl bought the Charter a couple years ago for Claude Werner’s snub class. It was an experiment to see how well the inexpensive Charter would hold up. It’s not as good as a S&W, but it’s been a pretty good gun for the price. Karl uses it as a BUG, so naturally it was the gun he used for demos during the class. Karl was shooting some of my .38 reloads and at one point asked me what primers I was using because he was shooting and getting a click instead of a bang. This particular batch was made using Wolf SPP, and while a lot of people are down on Wolf quality I only opted to use Wolf because so many people on the Brian Enos forum highly recommended them. Plus, my snubs have all had work done and need slightly “softer/more sensitive” primers, and all the rounds go bang for me so it was curious why they wouldn’t go bang out of his stock gun. But it’s natural to suspect the ammo. Karl tried some factory Speer Lawman, but had similar results of too many clicks when there should have been bangs. Some rounds took 2-3 strikes before they would go off, and I think one didn’t go off at all.

As of this writing I’m not sure what exactly is wrong, but all signs point to the gun malfunctioning.

Of course some will say, this is precisely why the revolver is so great, because if you get a click, just press the trigger again. Yeah, but now your 5-shot snub has become a 4-shot-or-less snub. If you saw how this went down, it was a lot of clicks before we’d get a bang, and it was a lot of time wasted with nothing useful going on. Imagine you were in a life-or-death situation and only kept getting clicks? What if only 2 of the 5 rounds went off at all? Plus consider a natural response will be to press harder/faster, meaning when one finally does go off you likely will have yanked the trigger and won’t get an acceptable hit with what little functioning ammo you had! Is that really a comforting feeling? It was disconcerting enough on the practice range, I’m sure it would be horrifying if I needed the gun to fire right now and it didn’t.

Plus, “just press the trigger again” only works if you can press the trigger at all.

After a class like that, I like to dry fire to reinforce and remember what I need. So the day after class I pulled out my 442 to do some dry practice. I unloaded it, but something didn’t feel right as I tried to move the cylinder. I locked the cylinder back into the frame and tried pressing the trigger and it was like pulling against a rock… it would barely budge! I unlocked the cylinder and tried to manually rotate it. It was like someone left the parking brake on and it would barely budge. I got scared that attempting to use the gun would break some small part from pulling so darn hard on the thing. *sigh*

Ultimately what wasn’t working was the cylinder wasn’t spinning freely. I removed the crane retention screw, but couldn’t get the crane to easily remove from the frame. After some work it came out. Then I tried to remove the cylinder from the crane, and while that should normally just slide out, it wasn’t going to come so easily. After more work I managed to remove it… and all over the sleeve was this brown something or other. I couldn’t tell if it was rust? Was it dirt and crud (the soil in Lee County is sandy loam, emphasis on the sandy)? I couldn’t really tell, but I spent a good deal of time cleaning and scrubbing it clean, lubing things up, and back together it went. It functioned fine after that.

What surprised me was how the gun ran just fine the day before, no problems in class. But the first trigger press after class was a failure and wasn’t going to happen.  That wasn’t a comforting feeling.

What caused both of these? Some might say the guns needed more cleaning. That’s probably true, but I can ignore my semi-auto (my XD-9 or my M&P-9) for many many cleanings. Look at how much the pistol-training.com torture tests specifically avoid cleaning, and those guns run and run. But if a purported reason (myth?) for the superiority of revolvers is they “just work”, well… they didn’t. Two instances of revolver fail. Myth busted.

Realize, I’m not a semi-auto nor a revolver guy — I’m both. I’ll have an M&P 9 as a primary and the 442 as a BUG. I appreciate both systems for what they provide and offer. Both have advantages, both have disadvantages. The key is to remember that both are mechanical. Both designs have been around for over a century, but in the time since then improvements have been made to tweak the system. Modern semi-autos are extremely reliable. They can malfunction in simple ways that are easy to remedy, they can malfunction in ways that require you to see a gunsmith. Modern revolvers are extremely reliable. They can malfunction in simple ways, they can malfunction in ways that get Wife upset because you now have a gun disassembled on the bed. 🙂  Neither is without risk of failure, and when either fails they can fail in simple ways or fail in difficult ways. Let’s put those justification myths aside, shall we?

2012-07-31 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, Day 2, SHO (all drills SHO)

  1. 20 reps of wall drill from press-out
  2. 10 reps draw & fire, slow
  3. 10 reps draw & fire 3/4 speed
  4. 5 reps reload from slidelock, slow
  5. 5 reps reload from slidelock 3/4 speed
  6. 5 reps TRB
  7. 5 reps LRW
  8. 10 reps wall drill from press-out

All drills are strong-hand-only. So I reckon that means the weak-hand is 100% not involved. So all those reloads, all those malfunction clearances, one hand only. This is where a good rear sight like a Dawson Precision Charger is quite useful.

This is also illustration that while these skills are unlikely to be something you generally need, there’s merit in knowing and practicing them but with perspective. Note the skill is only worked once in the 4-week session (well, twice technically since you’ll do it again WHO next week), and when it is worked, it’s not worked for many reps. This way you don’t ignore the skill completely, but you also don’t spend more time than is warranted, instead spending that finite time on highly important skills like the press-out.

But of course, this is just a generalized routine. Your goals may necessitate a different approach. I think it’s a good template to start with, and eventually I’ll refine and change it to suit my needs.

2012-07-30 dry fire practice

/ hsoi

Following TLG’s sample dry fire routine.

Week 3, Day 1, basic routine

  1. 20 reps of wall drill from extension 2H
  2. 5 reps of wall drill from extension SHO
  3. 5 reps of wall drill from extension WHO
  4. 20 reps of wall drill from press-out 2H
  5. 5 reps of wall drill from press-out SHO
  6. 5 reps of wall drill from press-out WHO

After my performance on Saturday I wanted to work on speed of the press out and getting on the trigger faster. Sure enough I got on the trigger faster, but I see the sights dip. Ugh. I can tell part of it is not having a consistent “crush grip”… a common problem I have when I dry fire because my brain knows I’m dry firing.

So… more things for me to work on. There’s always a list of stuff.

 

ArmsBand

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

On Jim Scoutten of Shooting USA’s Facebook Page, he posted about this new product called the ArmsBand.

Basically, it’s a holster method where a small gun can be strapped to the inside of your upper arm.

Jim simply posted: “New Carry Idea: Arm Wrap. What do you think? (Takes a big arm to hide a gun)”

I posted my thoughts:

Um… I’d want to actually see it before passing too much judgment. But that said… The manufacturer’s warning “The elastic pocket can catch the trigger and result in accidental discharge which can kill or maim the user!!” makes me wonder a bit… could the gun shift around while “holstered” (it seems to just be elastic (which can wear out) and with sweat, movement, your arm flexing and extending, could there be enough shift to cause a discharge?

As well, it’s not exactly clear to me how you are supposed to draw the gun, and do so in a fast and proper manner. I’m trying to figure out the mechanics of it all. A video demonstration might be useful. I do wonder tho… what effect does this have on your ability to use your other arm? If now that arm must be moved to enable you to draw, now you can’t use that arm to block a punch, fend the attacker, use a flashlight, move a non-involved party (e.g. wife, kids) out of the way… it appears like it handicaps you.

I can’t pass too much judgement from just looking at a website, but so far it doesn’t sound all that appealing to me.

Now upon further examination of the product’s website… it’s even less appealing to me.

From the product’s main page:

When carrying in public, you can stand with your arms folded across your chest, holding the shooting hand under the carry bicep on the grip of the handgun without drawing any suspicion from anyone. On condition orange, you can loosen the strap and ease the handgun partially out.  From this position, drawing and firing is actually faster than clearing your jacket and drawing from the waist.

True point. This is also an advantage of (front pants) pocket carry, because you can put your hand in your pocket and get a firing grip. But one advantage this ArmsBand has over pocket carry is in a seated position, the pocket draw ain’t happening. But what I want to know is, what are you supposed to do when you have to suddenly go from condition yellow to condition red/black? Yeah I know, you have awesome ninja skills and no one will ever get the drop on you. But if successful and fast draw from this ArmsBand requires you to have some time and advanced notice, then it’s not a good holster. No one (not even Col. Cooper) could live their lives 100% in condition yellow — we all slip into condition white now and again, and yes things happen in life that surprise you or “come out of nowhere”. Shit happens, and your gear shouldn’t hamper you. Again, it is unclear to me exactly how you are supposed to draw from the ArmsBand. If you have to loosen a strap and ease the gun out, THEN you can take a solid firing grip on the gun and draw then well, I just don’t see how you can do this quickly. I really would like to see how one is supposed to draw from this rig because I think that’s vitally important in assessing the value of this piece of equipment.

Even for folks who don’t carry concealed in public, you can conveniently carry in an ArmsBand® Concealed Carry Holster at home.

Why? I guess on the one hand I wonder why you’d need to be concealed at home — it’s your home. But even if for some reason you have to, there are better ways to carry at home. Why not an IWB holster at 3 o’clock? I suppose someone has a context for this tho.

This should be of particular benefit for single women.

Why? And why wouldn’t it benefit married women? And why wouldn’t it just benefit men too? Something about that bit of marketing just feels off to me. But this is more about the equipment than the marketing.

If you read the website, there’s much discussion about the elastic, the dangers of the holster… it all makes me a little unsure just how solid and stable a platform this is. If mere use of this holster could risk a discharge, do I really want to use it? The growing list of schools and training centers banning the SERPA shows that there’s no tolerance for dangerous equipment. But with a SERPA the worst you get is shot in the leg. With this ArmsBand you could blow out your Axillary or Subclavian artery not to mention your shoulder joint. How are you supposed to know when the elastic is “too far gone”? and if everyone’s subjective assessment of that is different, could someone decide a little too late? This bugs me.

I repeat the “tactical” issues of drawing. If my left arm is now involved in the draw, I cannot use it for other purposes like blocking a punch, pushing off the attacker, holding a flashlight, moving someone else (e.g. wife, kids) out of the way. Does this mean I can’t hold small children in my arms because now my arms are busy and Lord knows I’m not going to drop a child on the pavement if I have to draw a gun to try to save the child’s life. I think about the need to move and “get off the X”… try running with your arms folded across your chest. Try keeping your balance. I think about being involved in a bear-hug or something else with your arms trapped against your side; granted there a standard 3 o’clock draw could also be difficult, which is why we also carry alternatives.

Then there’s practice.

DO NOT holster or re-holster a loaded gun while the holster is in place on your arm. The elastic pocket can catch the trigger and result in accidental discharge which can kill or maim the user!! Always take the ArmsBand® off to re-holster the gun.

This is going to make it cumbersome to practice. If you’re going to carry this way, you need to practice with it. That means a lot of dry fire practice with it, and a bunch of live fire too. Now first, hopefully you can find a gun range that will allow you to practice with such a holster. Second, you have to follow the manufacturers instructions and always take off the ArmsBand to reholster. I know this would get really old. Heck, dealing with simple pocket holsters in the recent DPS-BUG class was a pain, and this ArmsBand is a lot more work to reholster. If you’re not going to be willing to practice and put in the dedication necessary to learn how to use this holster properly and effectively, then you shouldn’t use it. I’m sure some folks are willing to put in the time and effort, but I know most people don’t practice near enough as it is and would be even less inclined to do so with such a cumbersome reholstering process.

From their Safety Precautions page:

Do not carry any single action semi-auto pistol in a “cocked and locked” condition or with a round chambered.

So if you carry a 1911-style gun, don’t. Because if you can’t carry a 1911 cocked and locked, you might as well be carrying a paper-weight. But that again makes me wonder about the design. But most small guns are not this style, and certainly there are lots of other small guns one could choose from.

I know I said I didn’t want to pass too much judgement without seeing it, but the more I read through the website, the more things struck me as troubling. I do applaud the inventor’s desire to think up new solutions. I do applaud the effort and hard work. The marketing doesn’t sell me; in fact, it turns me off. Maybe more information is needed. I think a video that demonstrates the use of the holster would be useful and could help in answering a lot of questions. But even if it answers some questions, other things about the holster — even if it was a perfect mechanical design — still bother me. For example, the muzzle direction, the realities of having your “other arm” bound up in the draw process instead of being free to do other tasks. The jury is still out, but it’s going to take a lot of convincing for me to be swayed. I could be swayed, but I’m going to need to see a lot of solid evidence in light of what I’ve already seen.

AAR – DPS-BUG @ KR Training 28 July 2012

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Today was pretty cool.

I took part in the first offering of KR Training’s new “Defensive Pistol Skills – Back-up Gun” class. I participated as a student, tho I certainly assisted where and when necessary. I’ve been looking forward to this class, because I think it’s an important offering.

You see, like all things made by humans, guns aren’t perfect. Like all mechanical things, guns can break. There are many reasons for carrying a Back-Up Gun (BUG), and mechanical failure of your primary gun is one reason — hence, “back-up”. But because BUG’s tend to be small guns, like Glock 26’s, snub-nose revolvers, Ruger LCP, Kel-Tec’s, the smaller Kahr’s, and the like, a lot of people choose to carry these “little guns” as their primary guns. Whether you carry one of these guns as a primary or a secondary, taking a class like DPS-BUG is highly recommended.

I recommend taking such a class because shooting these guns is not like shooting a full-sized gun. Basically, it’s harder to shoot them and shoot them well. They have low-capacity, so every shot matters. Some of them shoot weaker rounds, like .38o Auto, so again every shot matters. Then because they are small, the sight radius is short thus a small change in alignment can mean a big difference in the ability to hit the target. It’s hard to get a good grip on them. Many are intentionally designed to be “double-action-only” with long and heavy triggers; that’s hard enough to shoot with as it is, then coupled with such a lightweight gun makes it even harder to shoot. Carry modes, like in a pocket (holster) are harder to draw from. I know these sorts of guns are very popular with folks that carry concealed, so if you opt to carry such a gun you should get some training in the use of that gun.

The class curriculum is based upon the Defensive Pistol Skills 1 course, but it is NOT the same course. If anything, consider DPS1 a prerequisite to this class. DPS-BUG starts out with some fundamentals work using the little gun, because that is important. All the “high speed low drag” stuff means nothing if you can’t basically hit what you need to hit. And yes, you will be working on one-handed shooting… you can hate it all you want, but you won’t stop sucking at 1H shooting unless you keep shooting 1H. There’s group shooting, shooting against a timer, shooting the “3 Seconds or Less Drill” (in fact, we shot that both with our BUG’s and our full-sized guns, to compare and contrast). We shot from a chair, to allow experimentation with drawing a BUG, since they might be carried in an ankle rig or a pocket holster.

That was one cool thing about the class: experimentation. Whereas a lot of other classes have to be straightforward in the gear and what’s done in class, here part of the point was to allow you to see and figure things out. Normally carry in a pocket holster? Maybe try an ankle rig, or using off-body carry like a fanny pack or a daytimer. It’s a great opportunity to try things out and figure out how things are going to actually roll and work for you.

As for how the class went for me….

I shot my S&W 442 with the DeSantis Clip Grip the entire class. For much of the class I actually opted to use the clip grip and draw from the appendix position. That actually worked quite nice, tho it’s still a little difficult to get a solid draw (gotta get your stomach out of the way). I’m also happy that my hand held up after 150-200 rounds of abuse. 🙂

The big take home for me? I need to work on getting on that long, heavy trigger press a lot faster. My problem is because of that long heavy trigger  to overcome, I will smash it thus yank the hell out of the gun. To avoid that, I press a lot slower than I should. I scored suboptimally on the “3 Seconds or Less Drill” with the snub because on the last string (7 yards, 3 shots WHO, 3 seconds) I only got 1 shot off. I was determined to only get good hits even if it meant I didn’t get all the shots off, but totally lacking 2 shots killed my score. *sigh*  So I need to work on getting on the trigger sooner and faster yet ensuring an acceptable hit.

I’ll also say, when we switch to our normal carry guns at the end, it felt weird. Not just because I had a large gun in my hand, but when I shot it I could feel the springs vibrating and shaking. It was weird. 🙂  In fact, I felt like I couldn’t shoot as well… just spent 3 hours shooting this little hammer, then switching guns and shooting the full-sized M&P9 felt totally foreign in my hands. Just more things to practice and work on.

And I remembered to put on sunscreen this time. 😉

A good day. I hope we can offer this course more often… and I hope more people will be willing to take it. If you carry a small gun, you owe it to yourself to take this class. You’ll learn a lot.