USPSA Lessons Learned

I learned six valuable things at my local USPSA club match yesterday:

1.  In USPSA, I can leave the "shooting area" all I want without penalty; it'll only cost me if I fire a shot while out of bounds.
2.  If a stage requires me to start with gun and "all magazines" on a barrel or table, it's probably worth it to put magazines into a pouch after the buzzer unless I want to hold 'em. I seriously considered firing the first two magazines strong - hand - only, and I did fire one that way, but I stuffed the third mag in my front left pocket as I went. Only afterward did I find out that retrieving that mag from a pocket forward of my centerline should bump me into Open with the raceguns. Oops.
3.  My ability to call shots has improved,  and I shot all alphas faster than I've shot alpha - charlies and alpha - mikes in the past.  Dry fire and working with a timer are paying off. This is no time to stop.
4.  Speaking of things that paid off, handguns are not magical. They have to be sighted in like any other missile launcher with sights. After I installed night sights from Warren Tactical, I continued to shoot Dot Torture at 5-7 yards like my life depended on it, but I didn't take the simple expedient of putting up a paper plate at 25 yards to figure out what sight picture I need to see to hit a plate at that distance. Of course, there was a classifier stage with plates at about 15 yards, and I shot over the top of several of them before I sort-of figured it out (I also shot into the morning sun without a hat, which is dumb.)*   To rectify the situation, I had to go back to my roots and shoot those paper plates. Sure enough, the Warren Tacticals hit precisely at the top of the front sight at 25 yards. If you try to center the front dot on the plate, and you accept a sight picture that puts it on the top half of the plate, you will miss high. If you use the sights as designed, this stock Glock 17 is pretty accurate at 25.
5.  I need to train myself to move with the gun. I discovered this very important lesson by disqualifying myself on the second stage of the day. I needed to draw and move left, shoot four targets, then sprint right and shoot four more before dashing back to the center to move forward and take seven more targets hidden from view. Unfortunately, I was focused on getting a reload accomplished during each if those sprints, and when I ran left and brought the gun up for a reload in my right hand, I broke the 180. I was, of course, immediately stopped and disqualified. I took a break to bag up my gun and gear, then took over the scorekeeping for the rest of the morning.
6.  DQ sucks (I don't even eat at Dairy Queen) but it's not the end of the world, particularly when you're trying to learn the sport. I picked up some ideas as I walked around watching everybody else shoot, and I still got to walk-through all the stages multiple times. It wasn't the way I would have chosen to spend my morning, but hey, at least I didn't throw a tantrum.

This actually didn't put me far off on my goals for the day. I wanted to call all my shots, and I did that until the disqualification. I wanted to look for alpha sight pictures and make up any shot worse than a charlie, and I did that (briefly.) I wanted to learn the sport and learn about this particular match, which I'd only shot once before. Done.

The failure was creating an unsafe condition. That's not acceptable, and tonight will be my first dry fire in the backyard where I'll run sprints from box to box keeping a SIRT safely downrange. Eventually I'll incorporate reloads into this kind of back-and-forth movement. I think being outdoors may create enough of a difference that I have to practice it that way at least some of the time; another shooter mentioned that training indoors with two big white walls makes it easy to miss the 180 when you go outside, and most of my USPSA experience is indoors in a single-bay range running one stage per week.

So, the real question: is this making me un-tactical and un-ready, as one weird knife maker used to say? Will I get killed on the streets? Well . . . maybe.

I think I know the basics of the differences between "tactical training" and "sporting competition." But I do think techniques you don't use under pressure are generally unlikely to be available under pressure. If you think you'll "just go crazy and gouge out his eyes" when some guy who fights every weekend decides to tie you up and smash your ribs, I'm skeptical. I feel the same way about my ability to run a pistol. When I can draw from concealment rapidly and securely and place accurate shots on demand, fix malfunctions on the go, reload quickly on demand and call shots under time and pride pressure, then it'll be time to worry about whether practicing the sport needs to take a back seat to practicing fighting. In the meantime, nothing I do for USPSA keeps me from practicing unarmed, learning more about OC spray, or working out how to be more aware and less likely to be caught behind the eight ball.

There really is a quantity of fun, simple enjoyment for enjoyment's sake, that makes it easier and better to train and practice. I predict that I'll get better at running a pistol by having fun in USPSA. If you don't need that, more power to you.

*Either practicing in hats and getting dependent on them will get you killed in the street, or failing to wear a hat in the street will get you killed in the street, but the hell of it is that I can never remember which one. It's a damned nuisance.

White Supremacist Crazy-Head Arrested for Threatening Chicago Judges . . .

. . . . Chicago Tribune can't help but call him "blogger" instead.

I kid the Trib, but seriously, this is a guy who hosts radio shows and works with National Vanguard and other white supremacist groups, and to make your headline:

Blogger arrested in threats on federal judges

Well, it just seems like maybe they're letting some emotional content shine through, there.

I don't know a whole lot about Hal Turner except that he's another white supremacist (or separatist, or racialist, or whatever term he prefers) who doesn't get how the real world works. He's also full of beans, as evidenced by his years and years of making threats. He posted his ideas for unmanned drones with bombs to attack the Obama inauguration with the words, "I'm not saying what I'm going to do, but after Tuesday the name Hal Turner will go down in history." Only Tuesday came and went, he did nothing, and nobody cared.

He was actually arrested a couple of weeks ago on charges of inciting violence against state officials in Connecticut and elsewhere, but today it's the FBI who picked him up because the targets of his alleged threats were, again according to the Tribune, the three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals who ruled in favor of Chicago's handgun ban last month. I can certainly understand why people are angry at those particular judges, because the ruling was ridiculous (that was the one in which the 7th claimed that the right of self-defense is not fundamental; that the legislature creates the right to defend yourself, and if the legislature passes a law requiring that you submit to attack or murder, then that's that) but judges say and write stupid things all the time. These particular judges were swimming against the tide on that decision, and they knew it. They knew there was a pretty good chance that they would be overturned by the Supreme Court, and in fact the case has already been appealed to that body. So why freak out and threaten to kill these judges over that case?

You want my guess? Because, A., Hal Turner is the kind of nutjob who sees the world in terms of who he can blame for everything and never really needed a rational reason to whip out yet another death threat, and B., Hal Turner has learned from long experience that death threats are no big deal. He's been frothing away for years, not following through on any of these big macho threats, and nobody has done a whole lot about it. Reading between the lines, it looks like the Connecticut case may come to nothing as well; legal experts are saying that incitement will be hard to prosecute based on internet postings. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the internet is Serious Business--I saw it on a lol poster once--but the law doesn't see it that way. Apparently there's a de facto "loudmouth on the internet defense" built into most incitement statutes.

McKnob Style Mea Culpa

I don't think my wife handles cough syrup very well. She took something last night, and somewhat later in the night there were . . . . stirrings. Being a gentleman, I responded gallantly, gently, and yet with alarming alacrity. It soon became clear that she was in that sort of in-between time before you really wake up, so I proceeded with efforts guaranteed to wake her happily.

Those efforts failed. In the end, I gave up, put my arm around her and went back to sleep. She says she doesn't remember anything but a dream in which someone was, and here I must quote precisely, "gnawing on my face." I debated whether to tell her what really happened or let it remain a bad dream, but in the end I decided to come clean. Did you know that Walgreen's doesn't carry "I apologize for molesting you in your sleep" greeting cards?

Ogre Will Love This . . . .

So, apparently the skyscraper-dwelling tree-huggers who live along Lake Michigan in Chicago have their frilly underthings in a twist because the Chicago Fire Department made a decision not to send its scuba team into Lake Michigan (through ice, no less) to save . . . a coyote.

Yes, a coyote.

A scavenging predator. A dime a dozen. An animal that thrives and overpopulates even in urban areas. A furbearing predator that is legal both to hunt and trap in Illinois . . . . to the tune of 7,000 taken per year. The animal George "Mad Ogre" Hill used to finance a new pistol, because where he lives, there's a bounty on the damn things. One of the only animals in Illinois that can be taken legally with a centerfire rifle. These people would faint dead away if they saw what goes on out on the back 40 of the average farm in Illinois on the weekends.

They don't appear to be kidding, either. It seems they are actually angry that professional rescue/EMS workers made the decision not to risk human lives to save a game animal some of them probably shoot on the weekends. Hey, folks, I think turkeys and whitetails are beautiful, but if I saved one from drowning within a mile of the farm where I hunt, my good friend the landowner would think twice about letting me come back the next year. There's a reason he lets me hunt there for free, and it's at least partly based on controlling the numbers of animals he considers varmints.

This reminds me of a letter to the editor I saw in the Chicago Tribune years ago while I was visiting my in-laws (this was before they were my in-laws.) Wisconsin was considering creating a hunting season for mourning doves at the time. That proposal led a dingbat from Chicago to bleat loudly in consternation. She would never, ever, ever visit Wisconsin again. She would keep her money in Illinois; no state barbaric enough to allow rednecks to blast the bird of peace with shotguns would get another cent from her. They'd be sorry, that's what!

I actually did write a short letter to the editor of my own, pointing out that Illinois has had a legal dove season for as long as I can remember, and that the breasts of the poor little things were delicious rolled in pancake flour and pan-fried. At the end, just to be on the safe side, I pointed out that Chicago is located in Illinois. I don't know whether the Tribune published my rebuttal, but it put a smile on my face and that's all that counts in my little world.

A Tout Le Monde . . . . A Tous Mes Amis . . . .

I have two DVD's and one CD of backup compiled, so tonight is the night I pull everything out of my desktop and replace the motherboard. I'm hoping this will let me use minor features like sound . . . and video cards . . . . and onboard ethernet . . . . you know, the little things. There is also, of course, the possibility that I'll just screw everything up. I won't be terribly surprised if I hook everything back up and the operating system rebels at finding itself dealing with a different motherboard, though the processor will be the same. Luckily, I haven't been using this desktop long, so I don't have a lot of data other than family photos and my emails.

I Could Tell You, But She'd Have to Kill Me

". . . . and if you blog that, I will kill you. I'm not kidding. I will murder you."
"But I'm sitting right here, and it would be awesome!"
"No, it would be you signing your death warrant. I'm serious. Now I sort of want you to try it. Give me an excuse."
"I . . . . I don't want to anymore."
"That's right."
. . .
"But . . . . I can post everything after you said not to blog the first thing, right? I mean, that's kind of awesome, too."
"Well, yeah, obviously. Just don't make me do anything rash."

I love my wife and respect her privacy and she reads this blog, so I will be a man of my word.

Your Attention Please:

Please, please, your attention, a moment only . . . . thank you. Ahem.

The Management would like to announce that the link in the post entitled "Why Do Squirrels Hate Freedom?" has now been repaired and will take you to the full story of a local veteran of the Iraq war, who survived an IED attack and was awarded the Purple Heart, being savagely attacked by a freedom-hating squirrel. Photographs of his wounds are included, of course.

Why Do Squirrels Hate Freedom?

Iraq veteran details squirrel attack in park

Frank Garren is tough guy. The 6-foot-4, retired Army sergeant was awarded a Purple Heart after surviving a roadside bomb while deployed in Iraq in 2004. He knows about combat and quick reactions.

An angry squirrel is another matter, said Garren, who reported just such a run-in recently in Washington Park.

“You might expect a mugging in the park, but not to be attacked by a tree rodent,” the 34-year-old Springfield resident said Monday. “I never thought a squirrel could kick my (behind).”

Read the whole thing, you won't be sorry. Sgt. Garren has a sense of humor.

Happy Columbus Day!

I hope yours was as good as mine. I celebrated by gathering a mutinous crew and setting off on a voyage of indeterminate length with a rather questionable goal. I topped it off by getting lost. Twice. Further adding to the historical realism, I promised them fabulous treasures (well, OK, used Volvos. Work with me here) which I then utterly failed to deliver.

I like to think the whole family got a little taste of the whole Columbus experience, especially when we reached our destination, a small auto dealer in St. Louis. The locals were indeed alien to us in their customs and way of life, a fact which was brought solidly home when, as we were getting the baby out of the van, a man in a large white GM panel van pulled up next to me and asked me, and I quote, "Hey, there, boy? You wanna buy a real good, big piece o' meat? Like, about this big? (Hands held approximately one meter apart.) Like filet mignon, man, you know?"

That's not something a country boy like me is equipped to handle. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I had several theories:

1. This guy had several sides of "beef" in the back of his van, and most of them had answered his personal ad in the past week, or

2. This poor guy had been told his CIA handler would be a fat guy with a red beard, but I was not giving the proper countersign, or

3. I was supposed to stare at him while someone else got me from behind so they could empty my pockets (HA! Joke's on you, Hood Robin! You should have tried robbing the rich!)

4. For some reason, this guy had some meat he had to get off his hands quickly, and he figured the best way was to drive around St. Louis asking big fatties to buy it from him.

I guess it must have been Number Four after all, because I checked all around me, turned so my back was in the open doorway of my van (which also blocked the baby in his seat) and smiled. BIG smile. "No, but thanks for the offer." He pulled past me, pulled into the alley so he was about ten feet away, and stopped. Now I was really starting to hear alarm bells, and I strapped the baby back in, started to get the bag with the Gun Blog .45 ready, and made ready to close the baby's sliding door (it's a power door that closes with the push of one button. My Bride and the boys were already out on the other side, and I wasn't sure what to have them do, so I just said "Let's stay right here a minute until we see what that guy does." In retrospect, if I'd sent them into the crowded car lot, they'd have been a lot safer--it was hard to walk between the parked cars and if anyone had really had bad intentions they'd have been that much closer to the offices with the phones and the people.

But eventually, after what felt like 2 minutes but probably wasn't, the mobile butcher service backed out and drove past us back to the main street (this all happened about half a block off Gravois Avenue, for those who know the area.) It made sense that he would probably have to get back to Gravois, so I relaxed a little, took a look around, and on we went. By that time, I figured the office might be the safest spot anyway.

The cars? Well, I looked at two mid-90's Volvo 850 wagons, a '96 Turbo with an automatic transmission and a naturally-aspirated '95 with a 5-speed. I didn't buy either one, and the sales staff did not impress. More on that tomorrow, maybe. If nothing else, I did decide that I don't need a turbo, at least not if I can get a 5-speed. It wasn't any more sluggish than that stupid Camaro.

(And yes, I'm kidding a little bit about the danger of the mobile butcher van, but the quotes are verbatim and it did feel like an "interview.")

NEVER FORGET

Don't you dare forget. If that means, to you, that you'll oil every gun you own and send a check to the NRA, good for you. If that means, to you, that you'll vote against the Evil Republican Warmongers so that American Imperialism can come to an end, thus ceasing to provoke our Middle-Eastern friends . . . . well, I disagree with you, but at least you remembered. Don't you dare forget. Never forget. Never pretend it didn't happen. Never pretend some spook lit up some thermite in the basement.

Never forget.

********************

Made of Win

I'm feeling good. The results of my last USPSA shoot came in while I was gone.

Now, this is a small club, so we're talking about shooting one stage. And the first stage every month is always a classifier; they tend to be simpler and less exciting, and they don't attract as many shooters. All that said, I'm still feeling pretty good.

We allow unlimited re-shoots, but only your first run is sent to USPSA for scoring. The results come in with the re-shoots figured in with the rest, so a lot of people hold two or three places. I generally shoot everything twice; my friend Leon shoots up to ten times per night, but he's 80-some years old and apparently figures he might as well buy ammo now that he doesn't have to buy diapers.

Overall, I came in 5th and 10th last Thursday. The 5th place run was actually my first time through; on my second run, I thought I'd try to speed up. I gained a second, but I traded three A hits for three C's, and it wasn't worth it. If you counted only first runs (and I do, since it makes my score look better) I would have been in second place overall, behind a guy shooting Open.

In Production class, I took 1st and 2nd place.

Now for more of that honesty. The stage was called "Six Chickens." As you might guess, that's six targets "hiding" behind three no-shoots, angled so it looks like they're peeking out from behind the no-shoot's shoulders. The drill was to draw and shoot freestyle, from a box, all six targets with one round, then make a mandatory reload, and finish by shooting all six again, one round each, but this time strong-hand only. That was the killer. As long as I'm being honest, I'll admit that five runs in Production by three shooters were scored as zeros because they hit no-shoots or fired extra rounds (I also learned what "Virginia Count" means that day--every extra round fired is a Procedural penalty!) to make hits on the targets. The one-handed shooting was killing people. That was one time when slowing down and just hitting everything was the best strategy, at least in our bunch. I was shooting at about the same speed or slower than these guys, but my first run (my slowest) was 11 A's and one C hit.
And as The Jarrett has revealed to us, that one was probably a bad bullet.

So, what does this mean for next week?

Well, next week, we'll shoot a more normal scenario with some more runnin' and gunnin' and the big crowd will be back. This will probably lead to me going back to the middle of the pack. But I don't care. This week, I savor the savory savor of TRIUMPH.

Gustav Is Going . . . . Well?

It's hard to say this about a hurricane, but from what I can see on my teevee news, it looks like Gustav is not as bad as we feared. There's a lot more to come, but a few minutes ago it was reported that all the pump stations are up and running, and damage didn't look too bad so far. It seems that Gustav actually weakened before it hit, where a lot of people were afraid it would strengthen, so that it hit land as a Category 3. It had been a Cat4 and I'd heard predictions that it could reach Cat5 before landfall.

We still have to see how long it's going to go on, and the storm surge is predicted to be 10-14 feet, but it doesn't look to me (from afar and with no expertise) as if we're looking at the destruction of New Orleans this time.

Which is all well and good, but then we come to the case of BayouRenaissanceMan. I don't know what's happening where he is, and he worries me. He doesn't get around as well as he used to, and he was unable to cover his windows. I hope he's staying safe! He's keeping up a pretty good running commentary, actually.