Guns

Dry Fire routine

/ hsoi

I document my weightlifting because if you want to know progress, you need to measure it, and to measure it you need to record it.

I also think that the fact I post here somehow keeps me accountable.

So… I’m going to see about doing that with dry fire practice.

And like my lifting, it’s good to start with an established program. It gets you off the ground, it gets you working on things, and it can then help you see where you are strong and where you need more work. I know of some places I could use more work:

  • snub in general, but especially on the press-out ensuring I can get the timing for taking up all that long, heavy trigger press
  • longer-distance shooting, like 15-25 yards. Group shooting, shooting against the clock.
  • WHO
  • shooting more standards, more classifiers and qualifiers. Pushing myself and again, measuring myself.

and the list could go on, but I need to write writing and get to my point. 🙂

So I’m going to try embarking on a more regular and established dry fire routine, and document it here.

Where to start? I’m going to start with Todd Louis Green’s blog post that presents a 4-week dry fire routine. I think that’s a reasonable place for me to start. It keeps the individual practice sessions short, but the frequency is high and in many regards that’s more important. The routine focuses on all the fundamental skills, including one-handed shooting. I think it will make a good starting point.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now, but there’d always be some reason to not do it. Well, that shit stops now, and this shit starts now. 🙂

And so with that, off I go.

AAR – BP2 & Skill Builder @ KR Training, 14 July 2012

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Saturday July 14, 2012 was a bit of a different day for me at KR Training. The morning was a Basic Pistol 2 class and the afternoon was Skill Builder. It’s the Skill Builder that made things different, for me at least.

I thought BP2 ran well, and was fairly standard for what a BP2 is. People come to realize how vital trigger control is towards ensuring acceptable hits. They get their first taste of shooting to higher standards, such as trying to get all hits into a 6″ circle, shooting under the pressure of a timer, and realizing that yes, they can do it… they may need some practice, but they can do it.

But one thing dawned on me during this particular class (and note, this was just something that hit me; it is no commentary on the students). This is probably one of the hardest classes we provide. It’s not that the skills a particularly difficult. Rather, it’s a huge mental shift for most people. If they’ve shot guns before, they’ve never shot them like this. We bring a particular focus, a particular discipline. It’s not just plinking tin cans off the fence post, it’s not just aimlessly poking holes in paper until the box of ammo is empty. There’s now a focus, a point, a purpose, a direction. That everything done, every motion, every action, the way to grip, the way to hold, where to hold, how to hold, how to look, how to do, every little movement is intentional, thought out, and with meaning and purpose. Everything is geared towards making you efficient and effective at getting acceptable hits. And it’s a big shift from how people have shot guns in their past. Making that mental shift is difficult.

But it’s great to see so many people willing to make the shift. 🙂

Then came Skill Builder.

I’ve been looking forward to SB for a while. It’s something that Karl’s been working on for a while, and it’s still evolving. I’ve been looking forward to seeing and experiencing the class, given some prior discussed plans for SB’s ultimate direction. But even what I saw was different from what had been discussed, but when Karl explained his reasoning for the refined direction, it made a lot of sense. Read: KR Training doesn’t teach static courses based on 20-year-old material; constant evolution, constant improvement. It also shows why it’s important for you to keep up with your training, because things change.

Another different thing? I shot the class, instead of being full-time assistant. Oh sure, I assisted and did whatever needed to be done, but I was up on the line shooting the drills.

And I shot it with my snub. 🙂

I’ve wanted some more work with my snub, one reason being the Defensive Pistol Skills BUG class coming up in a couple of weeks. But also because I thought it’d just be fun to shoot it this way.

I shot with my S&W 442 as long as I could. That gun is set up with the DeSantis Clip Grip. That means: airweight gun, pinky dangle, and my hand gets to soak up all that recoil. I was using my .38 Special plinking reloads, but even still… the hand got tender after a bit. I’m glad I brought my S&W 640 as well. That means, all steel gun, factory grip which is full sized and rubber, and that means my hand absorbs a lot less of the recoil. I got through probably 40% of the class with the 442 and did the rest with the 640.

I shot respectably. I’m generally pleased with my shooting, given the limitations. However, I had more than a few times where I dropped the hell out of a shot. Even with the improved triggers in my snubs, that’s still a long heavy trigger press. The sights are crappy, and the grip angle is a little more “downward” than is comfortable and typical with my semi-autos, so it’s some adjustment. What it means is: more practice. Especially practice on the trigger press during the press out — given the trigger, it’s a VERY different timing than the press-out with a semi-auto. I admit, most practice I do with my snubs has been dry fire, and that just doesn’t give the same feedback. So again, I’m glad I shot the course and did so with my snub. Still, I can work on improving the timing of my press out in dry practice.

That said, SB is certainly more geared towards semi-autos, and that makes sense given 99.99% of students use semi-autos. I actually can’t remember the last time a student in a regular class used a revolver. But the COF’s ran generally fine, generally organized in a manner that worked with varying capacities, and tho I missed the tail end of a few drills due to low-capacity and slow revolver reloading and given a few drills are really geared towards semi-autos, I really liked what Karl put into the course. I like the evolution, and I think SB is really worthwhile. It’s tough, but it’s tough because it focuses on those key fundamentals that everyone needs, and presents it in a manner that will test you, help you practice, and show you where you need more practice.

Other than coming home totally exhausted and a little sunburned (stupid me didn’t put on sunscreen), it was a fine day.

City of Austin crime data

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

I was reading an article interviewing Tom Givens, and Tom is a data man. He doesn’t teach what he teaches because of something he read on the Internet or because he wants to be a tough guy. No, Tom likes looking at hard facts and evidence. Granted, Tom lives in Memphis, TN, one of the most crime-infested cities in America. In the interview Tom said:

All you have to do is go to the Bureau of Justice Statistics or the Uniform Crime Reporting system and look to see what actually happens. Look at the crime tallies for your own area, break it down by population and see what the actual threat level is.

In my city, you have about a one in eighty chance of being the victim of an aggravated assault this year alone. There are 7,500 of those, a couple thousand rapes, and five or six thousand armed robberies, so when you break it all down, you have a one in twenty chance of being involved in a violent crime this year in my city; about one in fifty in the country as a whole.

So I wondered… what about Austin?

Let’s look at a few things.

I looked at the FBI 2010 Uniform Crime Report. I looked for Austin. Note that as of this writing, 2010 was the latest data; 2011 data was starting to be reported but didn’t yet have the Austin breakdown. It reports Austin with a population of 796,310 and lists “violent crime” (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault)  at 3,790. That’s about 0.48%, or about 1 in 210. Property crime (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson) is 45,826, or 5.75% or about 1 in 17. Austin may not be as violent as Memphis, but it’s sure not crime free.

Here’s another Austin crime data analysis I found, that looks at the 2009 data and projects 2012 data. I’m not sure how they’re making their projections, but they are projecting an increase. Now, I’m not totally sure about this because they looked at 2009 data and skipped over 2010, which I briefly looked at above and by comparison, violent crime went down in 2010 (2009 – 4,024 reported incidents, 2010 – 3,790), and property crime too (2009 – 48,026, 2010 – 45,826); population was lower in 2009 (768,970 in 2009, 796,310 in 2010). So is the trend really upwards? Hard to say based on 2 years of data. But, they did have some relative numbers too:

The city violent crime rate for Austin in 2009 was higher than the national violent crime rate average by 21.86% and the city property crime rate in Austin was higher than the national property crime rate average by 106.12%.

In 2009 the city violent crime rate in Austin was higher than the violent crime rate in Texas by 6.59% and the city property crime rate in Austin was higher than the property crime rate in Texas by 55.84%.

So according to their data gathering, Austin is higher than both the national average and state average in both violent crime and property crime. I must admit, seeing the property crime numbers surprised me. I knew property crime was a problem, but didn’t realize how it compared.

And again remember, this is only reported crime. Lots of crime happens that goes unreported. Furthermore, I reckon this is only looking at Austin proper, and likely leaves out areas that we like to consider Austin but aren’t, like Westlake or Rollingwood, Lakeway, and even “greater Austin area” like Buda, Cedar Park, Round Rock, Dripping Springs, Bastrop, etc..

I looked at the Trulia crime map for Austin. It only listed data “from 6/7 to 6/14”. I wish there was a way to list more data, say all of 2012 so far, but if there is a way I couldn’t find it. Just looking at that one week of data, I saw a few interesting things:

  • Crime trends by day was pretty steady. 6/14 had a big dropoff and I’m not sure if that was because it was Thursday or maybe they didn’t have full data for the 14th? But every other day was pretty steady.
  • Crime trends by hour? Most happened in daylight, tho certainly into the early night as well. It seemed from about 10 AM through midnight, with peaking in the afternoon (3 to 6 PM). 4-6 AM seemed to be rather unpopular.
  • Crime was most prevalent downtown and in the University area. Neither are too surprising. East Austin wasn’t as crime-riddled as stereotypes would suggest, tho 78741 around Riverside/Oltorf/South Pleasant Valley was pretty heavy. More crime in north Austin than south Austin.
  • When you look at individual crimes, one thing to observe is the scattershot pattern — it’s all over the map. Basically, there’s no “safe place” in Austin. Crime can and will happen anywhere and everywhere. Yes some areas may be more prone, but no where is immune.
  • Robbery’s tend to happen in the afternoon.
  • Assault happens any time, but seems to be moreso at lunch, dinner, and generally in the evening. Alcohol involvement perhaps?
  • Burglary hourly trend was not a surprise to me: strong during the day, from about 10 AM to about 3-4 PM. Again, this is because most people aren’t home during the day, so that’s the prime time to strike.
  • Theft runs an hourly pattern similar to burglary, tho runs a bit longer into the night.

I bet I could spend a lot of time in krimelabb and find more interesting data. And City of Austin has their CrimeViewer, but it’s too limited for what I’m trying to do. Both are good resources, but neither gives me just a flat out list of data.

Take this data for what it is. And I caution against using this data as a way to “fine-tune” your behavior, like to think that walking around outside at 5 AM means you don’t need to carry your gun. Austin may not be the most dangerous city to live in, but it’s certainly got danger. Shit happens, folks. It’s up to you how you want to handle things when the flag flies.

A bad day hunting…

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

… is just a good day. 🙂

Went out for a 24-hour hunt with Charles of TacticalGunReview.com.

Feral hogs were the target.

We headed out to his place after work Friday afternoon. Headed out to the field and sat over a stock tank for a while. Lots of deer, turkey, and cows moving and feeding, but no hogs. Charles headed off to another location. I sat and continued to watch, hopeful for hogs, but alas never saw any. I did however see lots of calves running around, charging towards the stock tank at full speed… just like any child. Even thankful for a moment that I did not decide to climb down from the stand and sit behind this one fallen stand. It would have been a better vantage point, but at one point a calf ran up to it and started bashing it with his head. If I had been down there, I would have gotten bonked pretty bad. 🙂

Just before it was totally dark, I heard a shot ring out… and squealing. Charles got something. I was hoping if there was a good sized sounder that they’d come running my way, but nothing. Went and picked Charles and his hog up. About 80#, which makes for good eating.

Cleaned the pig, relaxed with a couple cold ones, and hit the sack around midnight. Went back out around 5 AM but didn’t see much of anything. The most excitement I got was playing “will he bust me?” with a spike, and “what’s that rustling in the leaves? oh just an armadillo…”.

I didn’t “bring home the bacon”, tho Charles was kind and gave me half his pig. Thank you, my friend.

I did realize tho…. this was just what I needed. I was able to get my brain thinking about something else. Something other than computers, programming, iPhones, marketing, sales, business, teaching, whatever, anything and everything that makes up my usual go around. I got to think about the woods. I got to think about the wind. About movement patterns. Looking for signs. The hunt. Pursuit. The sounds of birds. The beauty of nature. It was just a wonderful break for my head to think about something else.

But now, I shall think about something else again: cooking. Specifically, throwing the pig in the smoker tomorrow. 🙂

Various things from the June and July 2012 Rangemaster Newsletters

/ hsoi

I totally forgot to read the June and July 2012 Rangemaster newsletters.

June 2012

Tom talks about The Drawstroke. What I really appreciate isn’t just the talk about the 4-count drawstroke, but also talking about putting the gun back in the holster. I emphasize this all the time, that you should put the gun back in the holster with the same motion (tho in reverse) and discipline as the drawstroke. The gun goes slowly back into the holster in a 4-3-2-1 direction. When we slack off is the time when Bad Things™ can happen (e.g. finger gets left on the trigger or in the trigger guard), so having discipline on both the draw and reholster are important.

Tom also writes a short piece about Barnes Bullets. I’ve been a fan of Barnes Bullets for many years, but I haven’t considered it for handgun carry ammo because of the lack of availability. But Tom and Lynn use CORBON DPX, and they give some performance data of their carry loads. What was most interesting to me was Tom shooting some of the DPX 110 grain .38 Special. It compared well to the Gold Dot 135 grain:

Another .38 Special load we tried was the Speer Gold Dot 135 grain .38 Special load, designed expressly for snubby revolvers. This load pretty much duplicated the performance of the .38 DPX load, but at the price of sharply increased recoil and blast. To me, the .38 DPX load is much more controllable in an aluminum framed snub-nose and it shoots very accurately in all three Cobra’s I have tried it in.

Interesting. I’ve shot some DPX before but I can’t recall how the recoil compares to the GoldDot. I may have to try again and see. The Gold Dot 135 is my current carry load in my S&W 442.

July 2012

This issue contains a few articles that you just have to read. This is a newsletter worth showing to people either new to guns, or maybe thinking about getting their concealed carry permit but just aren’t sure if they need it. It talks not only about various mindset issues, but has a pretty good primer on carry issues like choosing a gun and carry equipment.

Tom also presents some crime data. One that stood out to me was from the US Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2006. It dispels the myth that violent crime takes place in the wee hours after midnight.

6 am-6 pm 52.4%
6 pm-midnight 32.8%
midnight-6 am 10.9%

I knew this, but it’s nice to see hard numbers backing it up… for the doubters.

And for people that think we live in a safe world:

Total Violent Crime Incidents for 2006 = 5,685,620 (1 for every 54 people)

Yes on the whole we live in a safer world, but we are not immune.

What are the chances I’ll need a gun?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Here goes that Tom Givens character again, citing facts and drawing logical conclusions.

In reply to the following statement: ‘The statistical likelihood of a defensive gun use, shots fired or not, is small compared to the likelihood of an injury [from a] car wreck’, he said:

“I would disagree with this. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2009 there were 2,250,808 motor vehicle accident related deaths and/or injuries. According to the same source, in 2009 there were 2,621,100 murders, rapes, armed robberies and aggravated assaults. Every one of those violent crimes was a potential DGU, IF the victim simply had enough sense to be armed.

This rant … is directed at the people I constantly hear telling me that ‘the odds of needing my gun are one in a million.’ They are not.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics victimization survey, the violent crimes reported to police don’t even come close to the true number. For 2007, the BJS estimates there were over 5.6 million violent crimes (murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault). That is one for every 54 people in the country. Again, every one of those would be a legitimate cause for a DGU, if the victim were armed.”

From Claude Werner’s Facebook page.

 

Tony Blauer on Street Survival

/ hsoi

Tony Blauer has written his 10 Commandments of Street Survival.

It’s a pretty good piece, and really works to present and create a warrior mindset. And in some ways, it’s a mindset that’s good for life in general; I could see folks wanting to apply it as self-help strategies or ways to succeed in business. It’s all good stuff towards helping you create a solid mindset and attitude.

Thing is, I had this bookmarked for a couple of weeks, intending to eventually write about it. As I reread it this morning, it stood in contrast to something else I wrote about a few days ago, Claude Werner’s piece on “how much training do you need?”.

Tony’s piece sounds like you must dedicate your life to being a warrior, eating, sleeping, breathing, and living 24/7/365 this way in order to have a chance of defending yourself. Claude’s piece says that lots of people defend themselves every day without much of any formal training, and are we Trainers perhaps constructing a bigger boogeyman to justify training?

It’s a bunch to think about… lots swirling in my head regarding both pieces individually and the compare/contrast of them.

I’m not sure the two are in complete opposition to each other; in parts yes, but I think in others they are orthogonal or even complementary.

What do you think?

How much training do you need?

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Claude Werner writes in the 26 June 2012 edition of The Tactical Wire regardign how much training people actually need. He argues that it’s not as much as we in the “pro training” community might advocate:

Still, every year hundreds of thousands of people, who have had no training whatsoever and who seldom practice, successfully defend themselves with firearms, often small ones, from villains intending them harm. Accordingly the statement: “But you need to actually train with said gun and practice often if you expect to save your life with it one day” isn’t necessarily true. In fact, there’s not much real evidence to back up that kind of statement at all.

Claude’s analysis of why we have this skewed perception:

The essence of the problem is that those of us who study mortal combat professionally have constructed a fusion of the worst possible law enforcement and military incidents. The resulting amalgamated adversary is an extremely formidable boogeyman who a T-1000 Terminator would have difficulty defeating. Actually finding a criminal who remotely resembles that boogeyman is quite a different matter.

He’s right on that point. I think this is in part due to the fact we don’t always have reports of incidents. Police don’t record non-events. The newspaper doesn’t report non-events. Example: I know someone who has to pull his vehicle over to handle a phone call and some paper shuffling. While sitting on the side of the road, a vagrant emerged and approached the truck. My friend had his mental alarm bells going off, so he rolled out of the door with his gun drawn. The vagrant stopped, postured a bit, then left. Did anyone other than my friend’s friends hear about this incident? And it’s not like the vagrant was searching for Sarah Connor.

But if I may toot the KR Training horn a bit, this is one thing I’ve always appreciated about Karl’s approach.

Many, perhaps most, criminals are capable of committing the most unspeakable acts against pliant victims. Once defensive tools come into play, the criminal’s motivation tends to flag quite rapidly. Economically based criminals are in the business of victimization not fighting. As soon as a gun comes out, it’s an obvious clue that the victimization has gone sour and turned into a fight. Not good from the criminal’s point of view. The most common response is to point to their watch – “Oh, look at the time. Have to go now.” Actual gunfire makes the souring of the process even more evident.

This is what we know, and this is what we teach. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard Tom Hogel bring up the “oh, look at the time, I just remembered I have a dentist appointment” line. KR Training strives to bring reality to the table by looking at as much data as we can, not just further the hunt for Sarah Connor.

It’s an odd statement coming from someone who makes his living doing firearms training, but, as I see it, the NEED for training and pistols whose caliber begins with 4 is much overblown. And often what is taught is of questionable relevance to the needs of a mainstream person. If we in the community want to see more people get trained, we need to adopt a “less is more” philosophy and make our training relevant to the mainstream’s needs and resource constraints.

Here’s where I think we need to look at Claude’s words carefully.

Is much of the training overblown? I think so. Look at endless YouTube videos of people visiting training schools. Look at the things being taught. Is it really Red Dawn? Is there really a worry about zombie apocalypse? Many tools and techniques aren’t NEEDED for someone to defend themselves successfully. But I’d also agree that “what’s need got to do with it?” because if you want to learn as much as possible, that’s fine. The only reason I’ve wanted to learn long range “sniper” shooting was for long-range hunting, like up in the mountains where maybe I’d have to take a 300+ yard shot. But who knows if someday that might be relevant in other contexts.

But don’t let Claude’s words fool you. He’s not advocating NO training. What he’s advocating is the training community looking at what we’re teaching and ensuring it’s relevant and meaningful. Again on the KR Training front here, I like how Karl created a graduated curriculum, each class rather focused on one or just a few important concepts, and ensuring the most important things are covered first. For example, Defensive Pistol Skills 1 works on the basics of “gunfighting” like getting fast accurate hits from 0-5 yards and drawing from concealment. Reloads are just not that important at that level and most people aren’t going to need to reload in a fight. But reloads are discussed in DPS2.

How much training do you need? Probably more than you think, but probably less than some might have you believe.

A trip to the store

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Reading The Firearm Blog this morning, I skimmed over a review of the S&W Bodyguard .380. I got to the conclusion:

The “Bodyguard” is handy and light to carry as well as fast getting the first shot off. It would be hard to beat as a backup pistol or one you grab to make a quick trip to the convenience store. I know carry your full size pistol but to be honest many people do grab a backup pistol for this type of neighborhood chore.

If everyone else in the house wasn’t sleeping, I would have screamed at my computer monitor.

I know a lot of people do this sort of thing, but just because a lot of people do it doesn’t make it right, nor that you should perpetuate and encourage it. You know… like voting Democrat. 😉  Or voting Republican for that matter. *grin* I digress.

We don’t call convenience stores “stop and robs” for nothing.

If a place has a statistically higher chance of being a target of violent crime, well, of course the best solution is to not go there. But if you must, why in the world would you willingly choose an inferior piece of live-saving equipment? That would be like a firefighter choosing to go to a 3-alarm fire with a garden hose and a bucket.

If ensuring you have a talisman to ward off evil or make you feel comfortable is what matters to you, then I guess by all means make this choice. But if ensuring you can return home with that jug of milk should the flag fly is what matters to you, strap on your proper gun. I mean, you obviously considered this fact, because it’s why you carry a gun in the first place. But it’s up to you and your mindset. Your life. Your choice.