§65.11. Lawful Means. It is unlawful to hunt any of the wildlife resources of this state except by the means authorized by this section and as provided in §65.19 of this title (relating to Hunting Deer with Dogs).
(1) Firearms.
(A) It is lawful to hunt alligators, game animals, and game birds with any legal firearm, including muzzleloading firearms, and including a firearm equipped with a silencer [weapons], except as specifically restricted in this section.
(B) Nothing in this paragraph shall be construed to relieve any person of compliance with any other federal, state, or local laws governing the possession or use of firearm silencers.
(C)[(B)] Special muzzleloader –only deer seasons are restricted to muzzleloading firearms only.
(D)[(C)]It is unlawful to use rimfire ammunition to hunt alligator, deer, antelope, or desert bighorn sheep.
(E)[(D)]It is unlawful to hunt alligators, game animals, or game birds with a fully automatic firearm [or any firearm equipped with a silencer or sound-suppressing device].
So there you go.
Time to get your paperwork and tax stamps in order. 🙂
I know what I want for Christmas, but I guess I’d have to start my paperwork now. *grin*
I was pointed to this article, “On Being a Beast“. If you come to my blog for gun and self-defense stuff, you should read this. If you come to my blog for weightlifting stuff, you should read this. If you come to my blog period, you should read this.
The article may come primarily from the realm of strength training, but the message applies to any sort of training. The writer, Johnny Pain, talks about a conversation he was having with a friend about why they train. A question:
What if you were being sentenced in six weeks for a crime that you did not commit? (Or fuck it, what if you did commit it, I’m not one to judge).
How would you spend the next forty-five days? Think about it.
And all you gun folks reading this, oh yes, it could happen to you even if the situation was totally righteous. How would you spend the next 45 days?
Well, if it were me, I’d want to be the meanest, toughest, nastiest, most beast-like human being that I could be.
The concerns over training minutia would go out the window. Arguments over percentages or head and eye position on the squat would seem rightfully retarded. All that would matter is building a body that was strong and capable. Times to completion of various arbitrary tasks would be of little importance, as would one-rep maxes performed for other people’s benefit.
Things like biceps peak, body composition, quad sweep, or whether or not you could do a particular parlor trick on the rings would be unthinkable notions pushed aside by ever-present knowledge that your mind would be tested the most, but that your body could be called on to do very serious things. These tasks could be life or death, not win or lose. The stakes could be rectal integrity or death, not bragging rights on an internet forum.
You’d have to be strong, you’d have to be quick, and you’d have to have a decent set of lungs on you.
Quite the sound point. You get put into such a high pressure situation, and suddenly you gain great focus. You gain a greater insight into what really matters, and how most of the stuff we deal with in life doesn’t matter.
I know I get caught up in the details. I know I start to worry about all these sorts of minutia all the time. It’s just how I am. But one good lesson I’m learning right now is to just shut up and squat. The Wendler program I’m on right now? I’ve been analyzing too much, thinking about too much. I realized I was thinking way too much about it, and going back to the BBB template works better. Sure I still think about some details, like I am worrying about my knee angle because I’m concerned about the stresses it’s feeling since I don’t care to blow out my knee, but that’s different from just worrying about how good I look in the mirror.
There are situations in life where being an absolute beast could be very beneficial. Whether or not you plan on getting jammed up in the next few months, give some thought to the idea that you have one life and one shot at doing it right. We make decisions in finance and other realms based on long term payoff and relevancy, why not in why we train?
Don’t be the fat, beer bellied guy at the gun show who carries three cocked and locked 1911 .45’s and shit talks the 9mm round who loses his teenage daughter from choking because he didn’t possess basic first aid skills which would be much more likely needed in life than his 24 rounds of 230 grain hardball, or who can’t run to save his four year-old son from the drunk driver barreling down his street.
Get your basics down. Build your body up into that of a beast, a predator’s body, not a butter soft, tasty piece of food chain. It may very well all be in vain, and I hope to God that it is for your sake.
This is why I’m training to be strong. Oh sure I’m working to shed some body fat, but that’s because the fat is mostly useless. It doesn’t add anything useful, it doesn’t help me. I am not working my “chest” today because what’s the point of big pecs and big arms if I can’t do anything useful with them? I want to be strong(er) because that’s useful.
Preparing for the worst is never a bad thing. Be ready for anything. Prepare in the manner that gives you the most bang for your buck.
Oddly, some people think it is a bad thing… or at least, that you’re paranoid or have something to be afraid of. No, it’s just about being prepared because life can and does throw you curve balls, and you’ll never see them coming. It’s why we have insurance. It’s why we have smoke detectors. It’s why we wear seat belts. It’s why some of us choose to prepare ourselves physical and mentally for a confrontation we hope never comes, but we’ll be ready to meet it when it comes.
So when you train, train like you mean it. Focus on what’s really important. Yes, you’ll get caught up in minutia, but always be aware that you can, aware when you do, and willing to step back and refocus when it happens. Reading this article gave me a kick in the pants. Maybe it did for you as well.
Wife has always been big on OC spray, carrying it with her constantly.
I didn’t want to add OC spray to my EDC gear because I carry enough stuff as it is. But a few years ago I had a situation with some dogs and gee it would have been nice to have OC on my person. I’ve had a few other times where OC would have been welcome, and so it’s spurred me to look for OC that could work for me.
Thing is, I’d like my OC can to be in a particular style, a particular way to deploy it, and so on. When I find something that could work, the capacity is small and the distance it shoots is very limited. When I find something that can shoot far enough and have enough capacity, then the ergonomics aren’t what I want. It’s always been a tradeoff and I’ve yet to find something that fits my needs.
Until now.
Sabre makes this model called the Spitfire. Seems to be just what I need. Read a bit about the model and design, and it seems like it’ll be a solid choice. I have ordered some and we’ll see how it works. Yes, I ordered a couple extra cans just so I can try them out and see how they spray. Hopefully it’ll fit the bill, and yes I’ll write about it.
I learned about this particular product via a Facebook posting from Claude Werner. I trust Claude’s take on things. And it has a greater weight when Claude writes it like this:
I tell every class I teach: “If you carry a gun, carry pepper spray. Not having pepper spray implies that all you are willing to do to defend yourself is use deadly force, i.e., kill someone. ‘All I am willing to do is kill someone’ is not a statement most rational people are willing to make if they think about it for a moment.”
I keep a pepper spray (Spitfire) on my keyring so I never leave the house without it. It’s very small and unobtrusive. I keep it in my hand anytime I am walking to or from my vehicle.
One of the great regrets of my life could have been one of the great triumphs if I had just had my pepper spray with me. I learned my lesson from that incident.
This has been sitting in the inbox for a while. Slowly digging myself out. 🙂
Steven Gilcreast, Senior Instructor at Sig Sauer Academy wrote an article about dry fire practice, including a good practice routine. One interesting bit about this routine is the gearing towards Sig’s, or more specifically, the fact that (most) Sig pistols have DA/SA triggers and so a lot of the drills in the practice session consider this factor. While I don’t care for Sigs nor DA/SA guns, I really like the fact this practice routine is geared towards acknowledging the realities of the hardware and ensuring practice takes those factors into account.
I also liked this tidbit:
Your dry practice should be conducted 3-5 times per week and last no more than 20 minutes. I often work through the scheduled session and repeat if any time remains. When conducting the training, I work at 50% or less speed, focusing more on consistent, perfect practice repetitions over speed.
Good guidelines for practice, whatever routine you use. Short, frequent practice sessions do more for you than long infrequent sessions. Plus, working on being correct and consistent with every rep you do.
If you don’t know what to practice, starting with a program written by someone else can be a good way to get started. As you practice more, as you shoot standards and formal drills to assess your skill, you’ll find where you need work and can custom tailor your practice sessions to focus more on those skills. And yes, that means more weak-hand-only shooting for me. 🙂
There is an excellent article in there, “Survival in the Line of Duty”, written by Lt. Marlan J. Ingram of the Memphis Law Enforcement Unit . Lt. Ingram examines FBI data about officers killed or assaulted in the line of duty and examines common themes that run through successful cases (i.e. where the officer lives).
Here are the conclusions from the article:
Take your training seriously.
Don’t give up, don’t surrender – survive no matter what.
If you are shot, keep fighting.
Learn to shoot accurately under all conditions – even if your sight is compromised.
Learn to shoot, reload and clear malfunctions with either hand, long-guns included.
Carry your weapons and spare ammunition on your person, both on duty and off.
Carry as much ammunition as you can.
Once you make up your mind to fight, do so quickly and effectively.
Never underestimate your opponent – always expect the unexpected.
Here’s my responses to each point.
1. Take your training seriously.
This cannot be stated strong enough. Why are you training? To fight? To win? To survive? To live? If so, why aren’t you training with that goal in mind?
I cut some slack to beginners, because at their stage they’re still feeling things out and trying to find their place. In KR Training curriculum terms, once you start coming to classes like Defensive Pistol Skills 1, you need to start taking things seriously. I don’t necessarily expect people to be that serious about it at the start of DPS1 class, but by the end I hope some realities have settled in and when the student comes back for DPS2 and DPS3, they’re of that more serious mindset. That these are skills towards keeping you alive… else why did you get that CHL and why are you carrying a gun?
It takes us all some time to find our “seriousness”. We don’t start out with it because we don’t know it and it’s not innate. But hopefully sooner or later something will kick in and help you not just take classes, but engage in serious training.
2. Don’t give up, don’t surrender – survive no matter what. 3. If you are shot, keep fighting.
I’m grouping #2 and #3 together because they are related. If the fight is on, keep fighting until the fight is over or you’re dead. You should never decide to die; sounds funny, but read the article and you’ll see that too much Hollywood has influenced people to think if I’m shot I’m dead and they truly give up and fall over and die. Don’t be That Guy. When you are dead, you’ll be dead — that’s a decision that will be made for you. So until that time, keep fighting.
One recent event? In this past Saturday’sAT-2 Force On Force Scenarios class, TXGunGeek and I were running the indoor segments. One of those segments discusses realities of building clearing. During the “fast clearing” practice I like to hide in a particular room in a particular location and play “bad guy ambush”. The goal of the scenario? You’re on this end of the house, your child is in the far room and screaming for you: get to the child, fast clearing along the way. And so then I shoot them… and they stop. Why? Why did they stop? Well, because we get so conditioned to being shot being the “end game”, whether from video games, movies, or just playing with our friends and learning that “tag, you’re it”. We have to break that mindset and continue to our goal.
Keep fighting.
4. Learn to shoot accurately under all conditions – even if your sight is compromised.
This is where you need to break out of static range training. That is, shooting at tin cans on the fence rail, or being a good range citizen and only shooting cardboard targets from 3 to 7 yards down your lane, slow fire, and so on. This is why you need to seek out further training and ranges that can allow safe practice of drawing from a holster, movement, and other such things. Consider trying IDPA or IPSC competition, not that those are “tactical training” but they sure do let you shoot in non-standard ways.
But what really struck me about #4 was “even if your sight is compromised”.
I wear glasses and without them my vision isn’t that great. I need to try shooting without my glasses on and see how it goes. See what can I do. Find my skills, find my limits, find what I can work on.
It’s not just thinking about the middle of the night home break-in situation, which is real. But a more likely situation is that I just lose my glasses in the heat of the fight. I need to try this out.
5. Learn to shoot, reload and clear malfunctions with either hand, long-guns included.
Not much to elaborate on here. Speaks for itself.
But I will say to look into having a rear sight for your pistol that can hook on to something (belt, shoe, edge of table, etc.). Something like Dawson Precision’s Charger rear sight.
6. Carry your weapons and spare ammunition on your person, both on duty and off.
7. Carry as much ammunition as you can.
You’d think this would be one that doesn’t need elaboration, but alas it does.
You cannot know when the flag is going to fly. If you are fortunate to have the ability to see in the future, I’d like to talk to you about some stock picks. But since most of us don’t have superpowers, you just have to carry your gun — always.
I hear of too many people who only want to carry if they know they’re going into a bad place. Uh… if you know it’s a questionable or bad place, why are you going there in the first place? And as well, what makes you think that “good places” are immune to bad things happening?
And yes, spare ammo. Sure, the statistics might say “3 shots”, but you know how Murphy’s Law works… you’ll be the anomaly. So do you want that 5 shot snub? or would you rather have a M&P9 wth 17+1? and a reload? I think the only time you can have too much ammo is when you’re swimming or on fire, but otherwise, who sits there and wishes to have less ammo on them? If that’s the case, just carry 1 .45 ACP bullet, because that’s all you need to put down a charging rhino, right?
Carry your gun. Carry a reload. Always.
8. Once you make up your mind to fight, do so quickly and effectively.
This means you have to learn how to fight. You have to discard useless techniques. You have to work on your skills, you have to work on your tactics. This means taking more training than just marksmanship stuff. Try Force-on-Force. I know it sounds scary and intimidating, but really it’s not. If anything, it’s sobering and helps you really get your head in the right place.
9. Never underestimate your opponent – always expect the unexpected.
Skip ahead to 1:58
I know I’m a big guy. I know I’m a strong guy. I know I’m fair-to-midland with a gun. I can get along in a fistfight.
But there’s always someone that’ll be bigger, stronger, faster, better. More clever, willing to fight more dirty, willing to care less about the law, willing to have lower standards of conduct and do things I’d be unwilling to do.. or may never think of doing.
And so this goes back to #8, that you have to be quick and effective, to get it over with as fast as possible.
==========
Go read the whole article. It’s well worth your time.
This past Saturday was one of our long days at KR Training. 3 classes: Defensive Pistol Skills 2, AT-2 Force-on-Force Scenarios (only), and AT-1A Low Light Shooting. Originally these classes were to be the prior Saturday, but we got rained out. One complicating factor in scheduling is AT-1A of course requires low light, so it tends to only be offered in the Fall and Spring when it’s dark enough in the evening…. but throw in daylight saving time after last weekend and we had to run a little longer in order to time the class against sunset. Waking at 4 AM and going to bed at midnight… long day.
But a good day.
What was really cool was seeing a fair number of people staying for all 3 classes. Many classes tend to dovetail pretty well with skills learned earlier in the day being able to be used later in the day. There’s so much information and new skills that I don’t hold it against folks if they don’t remember to do everything, but it is always cool to watch people having those “oh yeah!” moments when they find themselves using the new skill or seeing how to really apply it and the practical utility of what they just learned. A satisfying moment as a teacher.
Whenever I’m in classes I always think about these “post class blog posts” and what I’d like to stress or talk about.
DPS2 worked on more advanced gunfighting skills, such as dealing with cover and concealment, reloads, malfunction clearing, 360° scanning, one-handed shooting. AT-2 is like a “intro” to force-on-force and coming to understand the tactics and other realities of self-defense, and AT-1A is about low-light shooting realities, which means a lot (more) one-handed shooting. All of these are really cool and important things. But even amongst all this cool stuff, one thing remains as more important than any of this stuff:
Fundamentals.
Or more precisely… well, yes, just that: precision, or more accurately, accuracy.
All of these “high speed low drag” uber-tacti-cool skills don’t mean jack if you can’t hit what you need to hit. During DPS2 I ran students through a small shoot scenario course against various sorts of targets: some steel reactives, some photorealistic targets, various other props. But the key was if you couldn’t hit things properly, you couldn’t progress and props wouldn’t work. The target window was made intentionally small so you had to slow down and get acceptable hits, and on those they did. But when the target window was large or visually difficult to perceive, such as on photorealistic targets, there was a larger tendency to “spray and pray” or “smoke and hope”. Unfortunately students would then go down and see where their holes were, and realize how they just made some lawyer very happy. 😦 And this was a factor throughout all 3 classes: the end of DPS2 includes a test, and while speed matters, ultimately your ability to pass rests upon you getting hits within the A-zone of the target. Stopping the bad guy in a FoF scenario? shooting him in the leg won’t stop him. All that one-handed shooting because a flashlight is in your other hand? the fact you use a flashlight technique that illuminates your sights so you can enable accurate shooting? All things come down and work towards being able to get acceptable hits.
You must slow down to get acceptable hits. You can’t go too slow, but if you need that extra 0.5″ seconds to ensure proper sights and a smooth trigger press, then take it because that will be less costly. Don’t shoot faster than you can shoot acceptable hits. But once you CAN shoot acceptably at some speed, bump up your speed 10%. Yes your accuracy will go down, but then you step back, analyze what the problem is, fix that bit, and that’s how you progress.
We don’t expect you to be able to do all this stuff when you come to class — it’s class! you’re coming here to learn! We expect you to try, we expect you to work hard, and we expect you to then take this information and skills and go home and practice. When you come back for the next class, we do hope to see progression and improvement. But if you’re having trouble, drop us a line and we’ll see how we can help. As well, do NOT be afraid to take a class again or even go backwards in curriculum. If perhaps you need work on fundamentals (grip, stance, sights, trigger), step back and take Basic Pistol 2. There is NOTHING wrong with this, and it could do you a lot of good. Remember that we don’t build houses on sand. If you determine your foundation is shaky, swallowing your pride and ego and going back to strengthen your foundation is a good thing to do. If taking one step back enables you to take two steps forward, ultimately that’s progress.
What really made Saturday work well? The weather. It was gorgeous. A little humid, but fine. In the 70’s all day, gentle breeze. Then a great group of students, open to learning, working hard… it was a good ay.
I’m in my truck, sitting at a stop light. First in line, with one car behind me.
I see a man cross the street, heading in my general direction. I keep an eye on him.
He moves down the street, ultimately crossing the street behind the car behind me. He continues down the road without incident. I had no reason to believe anything would happen, but better to keep your eyes peeled than risk being caught off guard.
But as he moved, I pulled plans out of my mental file cabinet for dealing with the situation should X happen. It is about being prepared and a little head in my OODA loop in case something does happen, but it’s more about planning and practicing and ensuring there’s something in the file cabinet, perhaps refining what’s in there, perhaps ensuring what’s in there is still relevent, etc..
If he started to directly approach my car, especially in a quick or aggressive manner, right foot gets applied to gas pedal, steering wheel turns to the right so I can enter the flow of traffic (or at least not t-bone a car that might be in the intersection). Basically, get out of there.
But he passed my car and started on a trajectory that looked like it might approach the car behind me.
What then?
If he started something with the driver of the car behind me, what should I do?
I know many good-minded citizens would want to stop the altercation. You see someone getting the stuffing beat out of them and you want to step in. You see someone getting carjacked, you want to do something about it.
And some might think, “I have a gun… and could use it”. True, you could, and here in Texas you could be legally justified to use deadly force in defense of a third party. Maybe. It’ll all depend upon the particular circumstances.
But just because you legally can, does that mean you should?
Some might be motivated by not wanting to be haunted by “after the fact” thoughts of “if I had only done something”.
But I say, you have to figure that out beforehand and come to terms with whatever your decision is. You have to know what you’ll do, where your lines are drawn, and to be sure you can justify and live with your decision.
I’ll admit, I can’t say with 100% certainty what I would do because it will depend upon the specific circumstance. But in general, I may not get involved. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know these people, nor what the problem is. The person that looks like the “bad guy” might in fact be the “good guy”, which I just can’t know unless I know the whole story, and that’s something I won’t have nor receive in time. I might be inserting myself somewhere I shouldn’t, and could be causing even bigger problems for myself. Is that worth it? For what it could bring to myself? to my family? the court case, the lawyers, the public muckraking?
Maybe.
For me the question is: is it worth dying over?
Is it worth leaving my wife without a husband? my children without a father?
Maybe.
In general, probably not. If I take the specific situation that could have unfolded behind me, say a carjacking, I probably would have stayed as long as I could to get relevant information like a description (already mentally recording that as I watched the guy walk), perhaps a car description, and dial 911 and let APD sort it out. My feet would have also stayed ready to hit the gas pedal, because if it looked to put me in danger, I would want to get out of it as quickly as possible. If things didn’t get that ugly, I might stay around to help the victim. But it really all depends upon the specifics.
The bottom line: I want to go home. This is a guiding principle for me. Yes it’s selfish of me, but I think Wife and Kiddos appreciate it.
You have to know where your line is, and you need to know it BEFORE the flag flies. Use every day situations and ask yourself “what if?” to help you figure out a playbook, and also find your limits.
The 3 classes (Defensive Pistol Skills 2, AT-2 and Low Light Shooting) scheduled for March 10 were rained out and rescheduled to this Saturday, March 17th. We have slots available in these classes!
Advanced Training 6, rained out in February, is back on the calendar April 7, 1-4 pm.
Now that I’ve slept on it, I can step back and say more about why this bothers me, instead of just the play-by-play of my prior post.
Of course, the casual gun handling and lack of rules respect and discipline bother me. But it really goes deeper.
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
Jan is trying to show how she’s a big 2A supporter. It’s evident at least one of the women on that show is NOT comfortable with guns, and it seems like the other one isn’t either, or at least is understandably uncomfortable with having a gun pointed at her. And no, it doesn’t matter if the gun is loaded or not, and no I can’t trust you if you say “it’s unloaded” because far too many people have had the last words they hear be “It’s OK, it’s unloaded”. None of us are above screwing up (we’re human), so we MUST be disciplined in our adherence to and practice of gun safety rules to minimize the chance of unacceptable consequences.
Jan is trying to win people to her side of the debate. Unfortunately her behavior isn’t going to win converts.
#1 – you don’t point a gun at someone. That’s likely going to close them off to anything you have to say.
#2 – you must understand your audience and shape your message to them.
If someone is “way over there” on a topic, and you’re “way over here”, you cannot carry on in a manner like someone “over here” because it’s just too far away. It’s too huge a leap, too large a gap for the person “over there” to overcome. What you, as the speaker wishing to persuade, must do is take yourself “way over there”. It isn’t just meeting halfway, but going well over to their side. You talk to them, you address them in their terms, in their mode. You engage them on their ground. Why? Because they are more comfortable there. Establish yourself there, then you can slowly move back “over here” and guide them along with you.
So if Jan could know the other ladies were afraid of guns, how about not bringing a gun on set in the first place? Just talk with them. Or if there’s a need for a prop, could you use a fake gun? Or how about a real gun with a training/inert barrel — that you installed at home before you brought the prop on-set so it never has a chance to cause discomfort due to handling the gun. Or if you need a fully functioning real gun, how about keeping the slide locked back the whole time? Or of course, how about just adhering to good gun handling, or at least never pointing the gun at the hosts and brushing off their concerns. And if you get called on your error (which Jan was), instead of blowing it off, own up to your mistake, apologize, and correct yourself. You’ll gain far more respect for owning up to your mistakes.
I couldn’t watch the whole video, and that’s a shame. Whatever message Jan had after the first 3 minutes was lost. A light scanning through the comments on the video and it looks like most commenters had problems with her gun handling too. So you can see what message came through the video, which means her intended message was lost.
Of course now Jan could make good out of this bad situation by admitting her mistakes, and maybe signing up to take some basic gun handling classes at a reputable training center. She could even document it. And then hopefully continue to exercise what she learned and really lives it, instead of just making for a photo op.
You’ve got to know your audience. You can’t talk with a beginner the same way you talk with an advanced student the same way you talk with someone totally on the other side of the debate. You can make the same message, you just have to shape how you convey it in terms of your audience.
Stuff From Hsoi 