I’m relatively new to the gun world. I’ve just completed a half-day of instruction with Dave Starrin at Gunsite. We started with dry fire practice and progressed to controlled pairs at three and seven yards. Dave emphasized the need to feel the trigger reset after the first trigger pull. For the dry fire exercise using the Glock platform, I first unload and check the weapon. With the magazine out, I then go through the draw stroke, put sights on target, and perform a controlled pull of the trigger. The trigger is then held in full compression while I pull the slide to reset the system. Then the trigger is carefully, released but only to the reset point and no further . . .
Quote of the Day: Plaxico Burress (and God) Spits on the Second Amendment Edition
As part of his endorsement rehabilitation, ex-con, ex-NFL player and current NFL player Plaxico Burress has written a rambling mea culpa for globalgrind.com. No really. The piece has more elipses than a FBI transcript of a mob meeting. Except for these bits. “I was accustomed to carrying a gun, and no one even knew I was a gun owner until it accidentally discharged that night. I thought at that time that it would give me some extra security, mentally, as I had been robbed at gunpoint at one point in my life and my house had been robbed twice.” So that’s alright then. Or is it? “I read recently a line that said, ‘If it doesn’t benefit you, then it has no place in your kingdom.’ And definitely walking around the street with a gun doesn’t benefit anybody or anybody around you.” Thanks for the heads-up. Over to you Nike . . .
Wilson Combat Bill Wilson Carry Pistol vs. Glock 30SF: Accuracy
There are three types of accuracy. Scientific accuracy: a gun’s ability to hit what it’s aimed at from a bench rest when fired by Number Five (yes, he’s still alive). Practical accuracy: any given shooter’s ability to hit a target with a particular gun at a gun range. And SHTF accuracy: the gun’s utility for a shooter who’s firing his weapon like a New York City or Chicago cop. The above video is a practical accuracy shootout between a $3080 Wilson Combat Bill Wilson Carry Pistol and a $539 Glock 30. [SHTF demo ater the jump.] I fired Winchester White Box .45 ammo from five yards. I’m an OK shot, it wasn’t my best day and the light was in my eye (kidding). I’ve put more than a 1000 rounds through each gun; I’m tuned-in to both the 1911 breaking glass rod single-action trigger and the Glock’s controllable CLICK reset striker-fired go pedal. And the winner is . . .
NY Cops May Have Killed Bystander With One of 71 Stray Bullets
In another example of appalling marksmanship by members of law enforcement, it appears that a bystander who was killed during one of the 52 shooting events that occurred in New York City over the weekend was probably killed by a stray round fired by an NYPD officer. This, in and of itself, isn’t terribly surprising given the population density of the five boroughs. What is notable is that, as nytimes.com reports, eight officers firing 73 bullets at one shooter managed to hit him only twice…
Marcus Schantz’s Closing Argument in the Trial of Kenneth Green
[ED: The following is the text of the closing argument presented by lawyer Marcus Schantz in the case of Kenneth Green, a resident of Chicago’s South Side accused of attempted murder after shooting two Chicago police officers. Green shot the officers as they executed a search warrant. The police said they knocked and “announced their office” but no one inside the apartment heard them. The police waited 10 seconds after knocking before battering the door. The police fired over three-dozen shots during the incident—without hitting Green. The defendant’s lawyer claimed self-defense.]
“Homicidal or suicidal, that’s what you have to be to shoot a gun at police officers that are in your home to execute a search warrant, homicidal or suicidal . . .
Incendiary Image of the Day: Marriage Has Its Ups and Downs Edition
Several members of TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia have pointed out that firearms are “going mainstream.” In other words, people aren’t freaking out about them so much. While my left-leaning octogenarian Mum had a conniption when I asked her if she’d like to keep a revolver handy, I haven’t seen a TV show with an anti-gun sub-plot since the days when every car in the entire episode was a Ford (except for the bad guy’s wheels, of course). And then there’s this cake topper, which is about as far from an image of gun and Bible-clinging po’ folks as you can get. Saying that, when you see this same scenario with an overweight black woman and an Asian woman in a wheelchair aiming ARs, THEN we’re getting somewhere . . . [h/t to William C. Montgomery]
Irresponsible Gun Owner of the Day: Sons of Guns’ Will Hayden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPxw6OWGspU&feature=player_embedded#!
Underneath this upload PhantomSavage asks “Why do so many people hate this show? I love this show, I watch it all the time, and I’m not a retarded red neck… So what, maybe these guys don’t have the state of the art equipment major contractors and companies do, but they at least know what the hell they’re doing and do amazing [things] with what they’ve got. Stop calling them dumb red necks, they’re actually intelligent people who run a small business and run it well, and have some fun along the way.” If Mr. Hayden would like to be taken seriously, he should, at the least, take firearms safety seriously. What if one of his employees decided to return fire? What a great episode that would have been. Or, more likely, crime scene evidence. [h/t to everydaynodaysoff.com]
Gumby Suffers Access Interruptus, Fails in Robbery Attempt
How you carry your gun matters. Having it with you is always better than leaving it at home in the safe (duh), but you need to be able to get to it quickly when you need it. Thinking ahead and practicing your draw for the way you carry your gun – IWB, OWB, tucked or untucked, under a shirt or jacket – can make a huge difference in how long it takes you to bring it to bear. Fortunately for a 7-Eleven clerk in San Diego, a potential robber didn’t really consider that when he selected his disguise…
ATF Death Watch 76: Brian Terry, Eric Holder and The Starr Chamber
In a perfect world, everybody takes their oaths of office seriously, tends to their knitting, and works hard as servants of We the People. Here’s the world U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder lives in: “The notion that somehow or other this thing [the Gunwalker scandal] reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that . . . I don’t think is supported by the facts. It’s kind of something I think certain members of Congress would like to see, the notion that somehow or other high-level people in the department were involved. As I said, I don’t think that is going to be shown to be the case — which doesn’t mean that the mistakes were not serious.” Not shown? Serious? U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered with an ATF-enabled gun. How do you reality check that kind of weaseling and hold those responsible responsible? Simple . . .
Chicago: You Can’t get a Firearms Permit Without Training and You Can’t Get Training Without a Firearms Permit
In the McDonald decision, the United States Supreme Court struck down Chicago’s handgun ban. Within days, Mayor Daley’s City Council passed gun registration regulations subverting both the intent and the letter of the law. The Second Amendment Foundation picked-off the most obvious contravention: a gun range ban in a city that requires its citizens to qualify at a gun range to exercise their Supreme Court-affirmed right to keep and bear arms. As that lawsuit headed to its inevitable conclusion (“What are you, meshugga?), the post-Daley City Council weaseled. They loosened the ban on gun ranges just enough to avoid legal censure, but not enough so that anyone would actually open a range. Yesterday, they played Catch-22 . . .
Gear Review: DLOC Scope Mounts and Dollies
I like to try and make it to at least 10 firearms competitions a year, more if the budget allows. For each of the different rifle competitions I have a series of decisions to make every single time I go to one. Which upper should I use? Should I leave the A2 flash hider on or swap to the muzzle brake? Do I want iron sights, a red dot, or the scope? The answers depend on the weather conditions, round count, and the expected course of fire, and can often change in the middle of a week. After one of those mid-week emergency trips to the range to re-zero my rifle for a new optic, I thought to myself “self, there HAS to be a way I can just swap optics without zeroing the rifle.” Turns out I’m not the only one who had that thought, as Alamo Four Star has a line of mounts and rail adapters that do exactly that…
Gun Training and the Story of Monkey No. 3.
I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about thinking. What I mean, is that I spend a lot of my clock cycles thinking about the how, why, and all of thinking, and pondering questions about how we learn, why we learn the way we do, and is there a better way to do it. Way too often, we do things in a certain way because that’s always the way it’s been done. And that reminds me of the sad tale of Monkey No. 3.