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.

Holsters I Have Loved: BLACKHAWK! SERPA!

Why do people hate SERPAS so much?
(Full disclosure: my first SERPA was provided free by BLACKHAWK!, while my second was purchased at the gun shop. Both are gone now.)
I suspect that some of the Serpa hate is very sincere flattery being practiced as people imitate shooters and trainers they respect. But many reputable training schools actually ban the Serpa nowadays (with most willing to make exceptions for students who are issued Serpas by their employers.) But that's weird, right there, right? Why are there trainers banning Serpas in their classes while law enforcement agencies and entire military branches issue/mandate their use?

There are three basic issues that scare certain users away from the Serpa, all three documented, like all indisputably true things, on the internet:

1. If a grown man truly wants to deny you your sidearm, he can simply rip the Serpa holster off its paddle attachment. Presumably, at that point, he can draw it if he knows how, or he can throw it off in the distance. Either way, it will only end up as a funny story if you survive. Now, this is one of those things that a police officer or a soldier has to think about, and if we're being honest, I don't. When I carry a firearm openly, I'm generally on private property among friends. Notice the dichotomy? That's going to come up again.
2. If you need to use a sidearm in the mud, in the sand, or grappling with some dude on a gravel driveway, it is known that a small amount of crud that finds its way behind the retention-release lever can lock it up solid. The good news is that your pistol will not be taken and used against you. The bad news is that you will not use your pistol. I honestly don't know the odds of this happening, but they're not zero, and apparently it's not uncommon to see one lock up so badly that it literally has to be cut or broken off the pistol. Here comes that dichotomy again: I never once, in all the years I owned a Serpa holster, allowed it to get any dirtier than any of the other dusty stuff in the same drawer, so I never saw this problem for myself. But then . . .
3. The big one: I think it's hard to prove a causal link, but undeniably, several people have shot themselves while drawing from a Serpa holster. It would be even harder to prove, but if there's a holster that is statistically more dangerous to the user on the draw than on re-holstering, the Serpa is likely the only candidate. And it's possible, at least in my mind, that the Serpa is no more dangerous than other holsters in this regard. But a whole lot of people, most of them far more experienced and expert than I am, have concluded that there's something about using the trigger finger to press that lever on the draw that leads people to curl that finger inward, which leads to sheepish limping and application of direct pressure to gunshot wounds.

Now, here's where that dichotomy comes in: I never carried the Serpa with a serious worry about a gun-grab attack, so I never tested whether it could be ripped off the paddle plate. I never carried it in the dirty and gritty real world except on the range at the Gun Blogger Weekend where I saw one for the first time, and nobody was going to the ground there. And I'd like to say I never encountered a safety issue with my trigger finger going where it shouldn't on the draw, but I'm just not sure. I never had an accidental discharge with either of my Serpas, and I never noticed my trigger finger in an unsafe place. But does that mean it never happened, or that I was lucky enough not to shoot myself in the knee when it did? I honestly don't know. 

So . . . why do people love SERPAS so much?
Well, if you don't know about those three issues (and most Serpa users don't, I think) what's not to love? We're talking about an American-made, inexpensive, high-tech holster. The paddle attachment has much to recommend it, so much so that Dragon Leather Works uses it as the basis for their paddle holsters. The paddle is wide, the "claws" on the paddle just will not let go of your pants/belt, and although there are concerns about it breaking, Blackhawk's not alone there. I broke the paddle on my Comp-Tac International the very first time I tried to put it on; been running it with the belt slots ever since. I hear good things about Safariland's paddle system, but I haven't tried it for myself. If it's not a whole lot stronger, I'm tempted to try to develop a stronger, reinforced paddle attachment I can then sell off to holster makers. I think it could be worth tens of dollars, which might explain why makers haven't made that change themselves.
But I digress. Why do people love Serpas so much, aside from very low cost, availability in every gun shop across the land (right across the aisle from the FOBUS display) and the "Made in America" bonus? I can't speak for military or law enforcement procurement people, exactly, but I think the average guy with a Serpa carrying a 1911 in a Burger King or behind the counter of a gun shop is basically buying a feeling. Carrying a gun openly in public, or even on a private range or in competition if you're not used to it, can be an exposed and vulnerable feeling. Even with a concealed firearm, newly-minted CCL's are known for checking and re-checking, certain that the gun has shifted, been removed by a street urchin, or simply popped right out of the holster. It's not rational, but the feeling is real. A holster with a definite retention mechanism--one that's got a lever you have to push and everything--provides a feeling that I have Done Something About This. I have addressed the issue of my gun falling out of the holster in public or being snatched out of the holster by some robber who got the drop on me. Having Done Something About This, I can now stop worrying. I am allowed to feel better and go back to being comfortable. The fact that those worries are perhaps not all that practical (or, to be less kind, rational) doesn't really enter into this decision.

If you're reading this, and that description makes you uncomfortable, keep in mind that I'm saying that I felt that way about the Serpa. In fact, I wrote that last paragraph in the general 2nd person "you," and I just went back and put it in the first person just so that would be clear: I'm talking about me . . . and a lot of people I think are doing the same thing I was doing.


Why did you throw yours in the trash?
I try not to make decisions based on being fashionable on the internet, but I'm susceptible to influence just like anyone else except for Judge Mills Lane. No doubt, peer pressure squeezed and molded me as shooters, trainers and writers I respect weighed in with their verdicts on the Serpa. As trainers and training schools banned the Serpa, it also made sense to consider what the ones I was hanging onto were for--I wasn't going to wear them to those schools, right? And I wasn't going to be shooting the pistols they fit in competition . . . nor did I need a retention holster for that purpose. In fact, I had little use for a retention holster at all. The fact that I was switching pistols factored in, too; even if I did decide at some point in the future that I needed a retention holster with a paddle mount, I would still have to purchase another one, 'cause neither of the Serpas in my possession fit Glocks.

In the end, that was the deciding factor. I didn't need the Serpas for anything at the moment, and if I did find myself in need of a retention holster, I'd need to buy a new one--at which point, the Serpa would have to beat out other designs like the widely-recommended Safariland ALS series on a level playing field. These holsters just weren't for anything that I needed done anymore. I'm still honestly not terribly worried about the trigger finger issue, and if I were issued a Serpa for some kind of job, I'd make it work. But I'm not being issued one, and if there's even some danger in that retention mechanism, there's just not anything on the other side of the scale to balance it out for me.

(But you're not going to catch me pretending like I didn't think the Serpa was super-cool a few years ago, because dammit, the Serpa was super-cool a few years ago.)

I'm Gonna Get What's Comin' To Me: A Raven Concealment Systems Phantom Holster

Since Illinois' CCL law (it's a "Concealed Carry License" here) passed, and especially after I applied and began waiting for my license, I've been checking out holsters and trying to figure out what I need and what I want (not always the same thing.) I suspect I'm like a lot of newbs in that I'd like to do this without generating the "Box o' Holsters" that all the wily CCW veterans talk about. Unfortunately, the longer I try, the more I think the process of choosing a set of holsters that cover the range of needs of one person, different from other people, who will try to carry a pistol every day, cannot help but require trial and error (that's the "Guess and Check" strategy for all you math teachers out there. Holla.)

I've had my IL CCL in hand since March, and in those two months I've already made some changes. More on that in some other posts; this post belongs to the future! Also the present.

Today, I'm wearing my present solution, a Blade-Tech Phantom IWB. This is the injection-molded mass-market offering that PDB raved about; he considers it "better than" the more expensive holsters he's tried. I don't have the breadth of experience to make that claim, but it's certainly a lot of value for a little money. It's cheap--Fobus/SERPA cheap--and I suspect others may be more comfortable. But it's a solid, safe holster with firm, positive retention and a surprisingly strong mouth that stays open despite my preference for a very tight belt. Its rubber pull-the-dot snap loops grip the belt and hold it securely and consistently, but they make it much easier to put on and take off again, which may be a bigger deal to me than it is to you. I've been semi-forced to use the B-T Phantom with only one snap loop, which has actually worked better and allowed a more concealable cant; I might make that its own post, given the enormous length this has already reached, but suffice it to say that I'm pretty happy with the B-T Phantom overall. But that's where the Box 'O Holsters gets you, isn't it? When you're pretty happy with the holster you have, but you just know you can do better? I agree with PDB on the value the B-T Phantom delivers for the money, but I do think there's probably a better (albeit more costly) balance of cost and performance out there.

The next thing coming my way is another Phantom, but this one will be coming from Raven Concealment Systems.

 I hear almost all good things about RCS, and I want to experiment with OWB carry a bit this summer. I thought I would want a tuckable solution for summer, but in practice, what I've begun to do is to wear short-sleeved, untucked shirts over thin undershirts as the weather has gotten hot. It's not the sloppy fat-kid look that I remember from 100 pounds ago; I just needed smaller shirts. Specifically, while I have worn shirts as large as XXXXL and still own a few XXXL shirts, I'm wearing an XL over a Glock 17 right now. The thing is . . . if you're going to wear a reasonably loose, untucked shirt all summer over jeans, slacks and shorts with 1.5" belt loops, why not go all out on comfort and keep your holster outside your waistband most days? I like that the RCS Phantom appears to keep the grip tucked in close, which the B-T Phantom doesn't seem to do well, and I like the promise of modularity in the mounting systems--it can be adapted to IWB if I change my mind, including tuckable options, and there's also more than one OWB mounting option, although I've started by selecting "standard OWB loops." If the promise pays off, I may have a single holster that works well for most of my daily carry needs, but also makes training and gun school classes simpler.

There are two big questions to be answered about OWB concealed carry in general and the RCS Phantom in particular, in my mind:

1. How much difference is it going to make to have the bottom of the holster hang down near the bottom of the shirt? Am I going to find that I keep raising the hem of my shirt and exposing this holster, so it becomes relegated to jacket/coat/open carry duty? With the B-T Phantom and other IWB holsters, as long as the shirt doesn't come up above my belt, no part of a holster or gun is visible.
2. With no cant and a Glock 17 that can't be trusted ('cause you should never trust a big butt and a smile) to be all that discreet, can the RCS Phantom tuck the butt in close enough to avoid looking like I'm trying to show off, under a thin cotton blend button-down shirt?

I dunno, but I'm looking forward to trying out my new holster.

*It's kind of a long story, but I'm a school teacher by trade. Schools in Illinois cannot bar CCL holders from storing their firearms in their vehicles on school grounds--they have "safe harbor" as long as they don't carry the firearms outside their vehicles, with the exception of unloaded carry to lock a firearm in a trunk. However, I can be fired for bringing a firearm onto the campus without regard for whether it's legal for me to do so, so I choose to disarm down the street and have a couple of pleasant walks per day. I do not choose to draw a loaded gun, unload it, walk it around to the trunk, and then get it out when I'm done, sit in a car and load the gun, and holster it, because that seems like a recipe for an AD in public to me.

Little, Yellow, Different: 5.11's Training Barrel

Like I said on Friday, my main reason for buying any training gizmos at all for dry fire was the desire to combine two traits my pistol simply cannot match:

1. Extra safety margin: make it as unlikely as possible to fire that "oops" round in dry fire, and
2. Do this so conveniently that dry fire is not made more difficult or tiresome.

The first thing I picked up for that purpose was a 5.11 yellow training barrel. This is a simple little yellow hunk of plastic that retails for about $10-$20 (it's currently $17 on Amazon.) At that price, it's going to whup on the SIRT pistol and the Laserlyte packages in the value category, and it really does represent great bang for the buck if you don't have one of the other two. However, now that the SIRT is in my home, I have to confess that the 5.11 barrel gets a lot less use. Some of that is likely temporary, as right now I only have one example of my carry/competition gun, a Gen4 Glock 17. A few months ago, when I began to think seriously about how concealed carry was going to change my approach to handguns, I only owned one example of my carry piece, a Springfield XD in .45.  Among the considerations that pushed me away from that gun (caliber/cost, concerns about Springfield reliability, ambivalence about grip safeties, difficulty finding accessories) the inability to get a 5.11 training barrel to fit it was prominent. When I made the switch, I picked up a 5.11 barrel right away, but when there's only one pistol to match it in the house, one encounters the first difficulty with the 5.11, namely . . .

You will field strip your pistol a lot.
If you're doing dry fire with your carry/competition pistol, you need to break it down and install the 5.11 in place of the barrel each time, then replace the barrel when you're done. It becomes a bit of a pain.  Again, this would be mitigated if I followed the advice most of Pistol-Forum.com would give, buying one or even two "backup" copies of the pistol so that one is dedicated to dry fire. That pistol could have the 5.11 in it all the time. Not only would that make it quick and easy to grab it for a brief dry fire session and toss it back where it came from, but if one locked the barrel in the pistol safe, it would essentially make the pistol with the 5.11 installed an inert, non-gun object that could be left lying on the counter, an oft-cited advantage of the SIRT. That would be nice, because other than this one issue, it's hard for me to come up with many downsides of the little yellow chunk, at least for home use.  If I had to find one more, I guess it would be that . . . 

There's no visual feedback to the user or a coach.
The SIRT and the Laserlyte pieces both give some confirmation of trigger discipline by projecting a laser dot; if your dot moves around, elongates, etc., then you're disturbing your sight picture with the trigger press. I don't know if this is a big deal, frankly, because I find that I don't want to look at the laser when I use the SIRT, and I don't have a coach. If I had someone else tracking the dot and giving me feedback, I could imagine making much better use of that feature, but as it is, the 5.11 is on a level playing field. So, what are some of the advantages of the 5.11? Well, for one thing . . . 

It provides instant visual confirmation that the gun is inert.
This is an important advantage over dry firing the pistol, but depending upon who's around, it could be an advantage over the SIRT or the Laserlyte inserts (in your "real" pistol) too. The SIRT is visually very close to a Glock 17 with a paint job, and the Laserlyte inserts make it obvious that the muzzle is obstructed, but only from the muzzle end. Actually, as I write this, it occurs to me that I never asked whether the Laserlyte inserts are designed to preclude the loading of ammunition. They have long "tails" that I could imagine blocking the chamber, and it stands to reason, but . . . I don't know. Hmmm.
Anyway, the 5.11 barrel doesn't have that issue. Both the exposed chamber and the muzzle are replaced with bright yellow plastic, and the muzzle is clearly not even a tube (surely no accident there.) Visual checks are near-instant, and even people from outside The Tribe are at ease, because they can instantly assure themselves that I'm not holding a g . . . g . . . g . . . gun!
Now, don't go letting that lull you into a sense of peaceful security that leads you to point guns at your palms or nothin' (I'm looking' at you, J.A.) but it's nice to have.

It uses your pistol's trigger, controls and sights, not approximations.
The SIRT is excellent at being a G17-shaped object that's roughly the right weight, uses standard sights, has weighted magazines, and has a trigger that pretty closely approximates a striker-action with a fairly light weight, a break and a reset. It does NOT feel the same as the trigger in my actual Glock pistol, being much lighter and with a less-defined break, plus no trigger safety. The grip is smaller than the grip on my G17 (I use the medium beavertail backstrap, but I've been wondering about the large lately.) And of course, although I can practice reloads with weighted magazines, I can't run or release the slide on a SIRT. The 5.11, in contrast, allows me to do all of the things a SIRT can do, plus running the slide for malfunction drills or reloads from empty. The only things that really favor the SIRT in this area are its ability to simulate reset and its weighted magazines. Otherwise, the 5.11 really is more versatile. Incidentally, I've tried the "rubber band trick" to fool the Glock into resetting the trigger, but I've never made it work yet. I could just be doing it wrong; maybe it's about getting exactly the right thickness of rubber in there. But for whatever reason, I haven't gotten it to work, and if I ever do, the 5.11 will shoot up in estimation.

It's installed in your pistol, so it absolutely fits in your holster.
I don't know that this really deserves its own individual, bolded line on a blog nobody reads, but it does matter. At one time, I thought it was a notch in the Glock's favor (as opposed to other 9mm service pistols) that it matched the SIRT, so I could use the SIRT in the same holster as the Glock. As it turns out, the SIRT doesn't fit my Glock holsters perfectly, and I actually use it without the holster more. I don't think that's been a big drawback for the SIRT, but if there's an advantage there, it clearly goes to the 5.11 barrel.

It's dirt cheap compared to a SIRT or a Laserlyte module.
I know, I've already pointed this out, but it bears repeating. Cheap things that work well should not be dismissed just because they're cheap. That's the definition of good value. A good friend was complaining the other night that Army units, in his experience, tend to point weapons at each other in CQB training. If you want to do something like that safely, and you need to do it in large numbers, there's not going to be a "cheap" option, but these little plastic gems are probably going to be the "cheapest" compared to "blue guns" or SIRTs or the like.

The verdict:
I don't use the 5.11 barrel nearly as much as I do the SIRT these days, but I'm not getting rid of it. I can imagine, at some point, having it more or less permanently installed in my second pistol, or maybe my third, and at that point I think it will be much more viable as an any time, any where tool on a par with the SIRT. In short, I like the 5.11 training barrel very much and I should very much like to be friends with it.

Wooden Swords and Laser Guns--How Do I Practice Using Deadly Force?

Remember Choose Your Own Adventure ™
 books? How about the Time Machine ™
 series from the same publisher? 
Were they great, or were they the greatest?

This is why people think I've read the Book of Five Rings.

Time's up, sucker. They were the greatest. I still quote facts about Jupiter that I learned from a Choose Your Own Adventure ™book about a mission to the moons of Jupiter, and I'm talking about teaching middle school science class, here. Did you know that Jupiter has 63 moons and 
Ganymede is bigger than the planet Mercury?

But my favorite was probably from the Time Machine ™series, and it was a mission to travel back in time and acquire a sword used by Miyamoto Musashi. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but there was a successful ending available. The final choice was presented in a scene with Musashi in his famous cave as he lay dying. Musashi recognizes this weird, eternal person who keeps popping in and out of his life, and agrees to allow you to take one of his swords. After pondering what you have learned from Musashi (other than that bushido requires a willingness to cheat) you choose Musashi's well-worn bokken and leave his steel swords by his side. Musashi approves; this, he says, is the sword that he has used the most in his life, the one that taught him the most. The others are almost like your mom's fine china, only useful for special occasions. If one of the swords contains any of his soul, it will be the humble wooden training tool.

It wasn't until later that I learned that Musashi's legendary fondness for wooden weapons wasn't all about a philosophical decision to embrace training and learning; he also really had a thing for beating people to death with the bones of trees. We all have our quirks, I guess. But the impact it had on me at the time, which I think has lasted, was a fascination with the idea of a warrior as a student, someone for whom training gear and good teachers are much more important than the actual deadly weapons to be used. We're all fond of telling each other that you can't purchase skill, but if you're willing to pay in time, repetition and fatigue, and you're open to new ideas, you can. I think that's neato.

Nowadays, although I have a bokken stashed somewhere, that's not what need to train with my primary weapons. I used to carry a knife wherever I could; when I realized I could buy a blunt trainer, I did so, but my "training" was sporadic. I still carry a knife most of the time, but I've added OC spray to it. That's been more difficult to practice well with, and I know it's a hole in my options. But the big recent change has been the acquisition of an Illinois CCL this year. With the ability to carry a firearm with me has come the realization that I (speaking strictly for myself) was not completely comfortable with my level of skill. It's great to carry the thing, but to what avail, if you're not sure you'll have the confidence to use it if the time comes? So I started to seek out training.  I did MAG20 Classroom, followed by MAG20 Range. I did my 16-hour Illinois CCL training class. I've taken an 8-hour force-on-force class from Black Flag Training, four hours on Illinois law from Andrew Branca of LOSD fame, and the four-hour emergency medicine class from Kelly Grayson (the one I reviewed this week.) Every time I take a shooty class as opposed to a thinky class, I notice something: my performance starts slow and improves dramatically as I shoot more. That's a clue, I guess; these skills are perishable, and I'm not getting my money's worth from this or that course if I don't practice the skills over time.

So I've taken steps in 2014 to shoot more. I switched to 9mm to save money on ammunition, and I've begun buying 9mm ammo in greater bulk to save more. I've joined my local USPSA group, the Springfield Tactical Shooters, who run one stage of USPSA every Thursday night locally. And I've committed to shooting live fire once per week (a commitment, however, that I've already had to reset once after taking most of April off because of insanity in the family.) Right now, I do that by shooting Dot Torture once per week to try to establish a record of progress.

That's all great, but it's never enough. I want to be committed to dry fire at home, I do, but I have three kids in that home, and because of my family situation, security of my firearms is very important. Moreover, I've never really become comfortable with dry fire. I store the guns upstairs, but there are no safe directions up there. I have safe directions downstairs, and I generally have my carry gun on me at home anyway, but then I've got to separate from the ammunition--and I'm still not really happy with that solution. So I've invested in a couple of pieces of gear that promised to help out with these problems, and I think I'd like to think through what I've solved, what I haven't, and what's next in writing. You're welcome to read it if that seems like something you'd enjoy. Of course, because I live in 2014, my favorite "wooden sword" is a "laser gun." 

Pew, pew!

Short version: I currently have a $12 piece of yellow plastic and a much more expensive laser pistol. In upcoming posts, I'd like to explore what each one does best, what each one is lacking, and why I I'm still kicking myself for not buying yet another laser pistol at NRAAM this year. Also, if you are a time traveler and you're going to ask me for my weapon at the end of my life, I suggest you just time it to show up sometime after my actual death and then just take the one you want. I don't want to be a pain in the ass. Green light, bro.

Archery: As Unsafe as You Make It

New safety rule: Know your target and the ignorance of what is beyond it.

". . . another counselor started a potato sack race behind our targets. When I asked her to move, she said "It's alright, the targets are blocking us."

The trust implicit in that statement is almost sweet, but the ignorance is chilling. I don't mean to pick on her--maybe she really just doesn't know any better, and if you'd never used a bow and arrow before, how would you know?--but if there hadn't been one person on scene with enough experience to know a very unsafe idea when he saw it, this could have turned out to be a tragic day in St. Louis.

Bleg: Electronic Hearing Protection Reviews

Shooting suppressed .22's in Tennessee spoiled me a little bit. I thought it was just too cool to be able to shoot with my boys and talk to them while guns were going off all around us. Now, I can't legally possess a suppressor, or "silencer" as they're known here, in the Land of Lincoln (State motto: "Did you know Lincoln lived here? Did you know you can still walk the route from his home to the drugstore where he bought his opiates?") But I spent some time thinking about this on the way home, and it occurred to me that maybe people wearing electronic hearing protection get most of the benefits of suppressed firearms. I mean, they don't hear the report, right? And they are able to talk to each other in normal voices, right? The only thing the electronic ears don't let you do, in theory, is shoot without bothering the neighbors (or the guy without electronic ears further down the line.)

So, do you have these magical audiological marvels? Do you think yours live up to the hype? At one time, people were saying the Howard Leight Impact Sport models were a good deal for the money. Anybody out there using these? What do you think? I like the price, but I don't really want to buy twice. What I want is something that will let me hear voices but cut out gunshots, and that's it. I don't need anything fancy, but I want it to be solid, and I won't have a fortune to spend.
Thanks, everybody.

Did I mention that the Second Amendment Freedom Rally in Chicago is less than two weeks away? I still need marshals, folks!

Kane With An FN P90 at Hero Gear Shoot

Here's some fun that's hard to have in Illinois. And for anyone wondering about legality, this was shot in Tennessee, where submachine guns and suppressors are both perfectly legal.


I'm slowly getting some media together from the event. This is a video I shot with my cell phone; My Bride was on vacation in Minnesota with all our cameras at the time, so this was the best I could do, but I understand over 600 GB (that's GIGAbytes, folks) of high-resolution photos were taken this weekend, so as people sort through what they've made, we'll see more and more.

You can see Kane controlling the P90 with ease, though he did lift off the sights. My dad is standing behind him in the orange shirt with a hand on Kane (just in case) and the range officer is to their left. Dad and Donovan both fired full magazines from the P90 as well, and I do at least have photos of them.

Appleseed Photos

Courtesy (and copyright) of John Boch, who achieved the rank of "Rifleman" this weekend:

Here's Kane with his Marlin Model 60. It's his favorite gun, but it was a big mistake to let him bring it. The poor little thing filled with dust and was unable to hold up to the round count. He started with his little red dot electronic sight, had that removed to use the iron sights, transition to a 1.5x Weaver (the only scope I had, and we had to buy rings) and then to 3-9x Burris. When the gun died, he switched to a 10/22 with a 3-9x variable scope (thanks, Nick!) and made a lot of progress. If you look closely, you can see the crate lid that's keeping my .223 brass off Kane's neck.

Here we can see Kane getting help from one of the instructors, "Papa" Papineau. A very patient man.









Here you can see Donovan and My Bride together on the other firing line. The slings are remarkably loose, aren't they?

Rites of Passage

"Dad?" he asked in the car as the dark fields and bright signs flowed around us.
"What, buddy?"
"I hope the guy in the shirt with the glasses is at the match on Saturday. I forgot to tell him thank you for doing my safety briefing and stuff."
"Yeah? Well, I don't know if he'll be there, but I'm glad you want to say thanks."
"Yeah. He took his own time from his shooting just to help me get started."
I smiled in the dark as he sipped his milkshake in grown-up fashion and turned the radio back up. We were almost home.

Obviously, this is NOT the obligatory VP debate post. You can find that here or here.
I didn't watch the debate. I didn't even listen on the radio until the last half hour or so. I took my son to the weekly USPSA shoot instead. I do not regret my choice; it's just too bad that his brother's grades have dropped, so he couldn't come with us.

Tonight was Kane's first chance to shoot, but it didn't start out that way. I've been bringing him and his brother along for a couple of months now, except when their grades or behavior aren't good enough. They watch people shoot, load magazines, pick up brass and magazines, reset steel, even paste targets--the only jobs they haven't done are RO and Scorekeeper. I haven't let them shoot because, frankly, I've been worried. It's a lot to keep track of all at once, when you're trying to shoot, move, make reloads . . . . I didn't want to push them into doing something they weren't ready to handle, because I certainly didn't want to put them or anyone else in any danger. And, as long as I'm being honest, I've messed up before. We were shooting at an outdoor range and having lots of fun a couple of years ago, and Kane wanted to shoot my P220. My .45 ACP P220. Sure, I said, why not? I loaded one round, we moved up to about three yards, and I stood behind him and held his hands on the grip. He did a great job, squeezing the trigger smoothly back in one motion and hitting more or less dead center. But I, on the other hand . . . well, I cupped my hands under his, rather than wrapping them around his hands to help him control recoil. The pistol came up so hard that it hit him in the forehead, and he was clearly shocked at the violence of the recoil. I couldn't stop thinking about how eager he'd been to try that, how much he had trusted me without even really thinking about it, and how badly I'd let him down. I've never let him shoot a centerfire handgun since, but the experience hasn't dampened his enthusiasm. And when he saw people shooting USPSA courses . . . . he was hooked in the first moment.

With all these things in mind, I packed our trusty old Ruger MkI (that's right, not a MkII, I shoot a MkI while the rest of the world has moved on to the MkIII) and a couple of boxes of .22's tonight. We don't have a holster for the old plinker, but I knew the guys at my club would work with us. I told Kane that we would find someone else to give him his safety briefing (mandatory before your first time in any case) and then talk about how well he'd done at that. No guarantees, I told him; he could do well at the safety briefing and I still might not let him shoot, and although I would listen to his briefer, I reserved the final decision to myself. I was still nervous, if truth be told. We talked about the safety rules as we drove back up to the range; I can tell Kane to "show me your trigger finger" at any time, and he'll make a fist with a perfectly straight index finger to show where the finger belongs. It does my crusty old heart good, I tell you.

We arrived to find a very small crowd, since the first of the month is the dreaded Classifier night (Classifiers are standard stages shooters run to find out how they stack up to "standard" runs by Grandmasters on the same stage--they're usually challenging, but with low round counts--old-fashioned IPSC-style stages, you might say. People who have their classifications often avoid them, but I shoot them so I can find out my classification--and because it's still an excuse to bust caps.) The course tonight was simple, but not easy: from a box behind a bar a little above navel height, the shooter was to engage two targets, each half-covered, from above the bar. The two were about 15 yards away. Between the targets were four poppers, arranged so that one was behind (and guarded by) another, and the shooter was required to engage these from below the bar. Personally, I tanked it twice. I used the Gun Blog .45, which worked very well, but I managed to miss a popper each time--and since I only loaded the 8-round magazines and not the chamber, that left me doing a reload before I could make that last shot. I did not cover myself in glory.

But when I was done, it was time to get Kane a safety briefing. He'd picked out the shooter he wanted to ask for help, so we approached him and he readily agreed. We retired to the safe room, where I picked out a comfortable chair in the corner, sat down, and shut up. He did a great job with Kane, but I have to say with no bias whatsoever that Kane did a great job himself. He listened carefully, he followed every direction to a T, he asked thoughtful questions, and he laughed at his instructor's jokes (the mark of a great student.) When he was done, his instructor seemed to take it for granted that he would fill out a stage sheet and go shoot. Having seen his safety briefing, I couldn't help but agree, so we headed out to load magazines and fill out his form.

We loaded two MkI magazines with nine rounds apiece, Kane plunked them into my FOBUS dual mag carrier. They rattled like broomsticks in buckets, but they were where he wanted them. We don't have a holster for the old .22, but it was agreed that Kane would start from low ready. After filling out his form (Shooter #62, Kane Gwinn, USPSA # N/A, Class U, Production, Minor) we headed into the range area with eye and ear protection firmly in place. Kane only had to wait for two shooters, which probably helped cut the nerves. It might not have hurt that the shooter before Kane, a very good A-class shooter with years of experience, scored a zero after he forgot to duck below the bar to engage the four poppers. He ended up with 2 Charlies, 2 Deltas, 4 steel, and 4 Procedurals. Oops!

When Kane's turn came, he didn't hesitate, but there was some discussion. The bar was right at eye level; he couldn't engage over the top. The RO suggested that he engage all targets from below the bar, but a voice from the peanut gallery suggested that he be allowed to stand in front of the bar and engage freestyle. This was quickly seconded as I carefully and silently studied my shoes. I didn't want to favor Kane, but more than that, I didn't want to embarrass him or put any more pressure on him. I brought the pistol case when I was summoned, let him take it out safely and carefully, and withdrew to the crowd. I can't be sure, but I don't think he was nearly as nervous as I was. His RO took him through indicating readiness, loading and making ready, and the low ready stance; the little gamer was planning to start with his sights on the first target when the beep went off. At the beep, he brought the pistol up quickly and squeezed off two shots at the left target, then swung over slowly to take two shots at the right target. Then he dropped to one knee to engage the poppers (Later, he explained that "I didn't want to do it an easier way unless I had to.") He missed several times, but once he found his sight picture, he rang the things like bells, going through two magazines. Since they were calibrated for 9mm, he only knocked one down--my guess is that he hit that one near the top edge. But when it was time to unload and show safe, he stepped out of the box, handed me his magazines and asked to go again. The smile on his face was clear and easy to read. And me? I was just proud. The kid did great.

And so another gun nut is born. He's going to need a holster for that .22 of his, and one of these days I want a .22 upper for the Gun Blog .45 so we can all shoot it more. But in the end, Kane's vision is his limiting factor. He sees very poorly, and his glasses can't help that much. Focusing in three focal planes with standard sights has to be next to impossible for him, but he does well with a red dot sight on his .22 rifle. He may be the only middle-schooler shooting in the Open Divsion if he sticks with this, because the red dot really makes a huge difference for him. And it wasn't a perfect night for him; he came close to "breaking the 180" (pointing the muzzle back up range toward the other shooters, an automatic disqualification if it happens) when he dropped a magazine and tried to retrieve it. But he handled even that very well, and when his instructor and I each took a moment to remind him about the 180 rule afterward, he accepted our advice with equanimity. His comment on his only regret? "I wish Donovan was here."

In a way, Kane opened my eyes tonight. I wouldn't have let him shoot if I hadn't thought he'd been handling himself more maturely lately, and certainly not if he hadn't gotten his grades up. But even so, I found myself riding a wave of surprise and pride when I watched him take his safety briefing and step to the line to shoot his first stage. I've raised him for six years now, but the kid managed to surprise me. He's really not the kid I thought he was, and even the next time he does something stupid and immature (and he will, sooner or later) it won't change the fact that he was this new, grown-up little man tonight at his first USPSA shoot.

Blackwater Blog Weekend: Ain't Nothin' Wrong With the Ra-di-o

The weirdest thing about the trucks they gave us to get around in at Blackwater was that no matter how many windows were shot out, how much the front end was smashed up, or how full of broken glass, brass (Simunitions or otherwise) used flash-bang grenades and bullet holes the rig might be, you could count on one thing:

She ain't a Cadillac, and she ain't a Rolls
But there ain't nothin' wrong with the ra-di-o!*

Think I'm kidding? Check it out:
Yes, that's a flash-bang in the change-holder in the back of the Suburban. I was kneeling on the broken glass in the very back of the Road Warrior Model at the time. I only did that once. The glass was no big deal, but there's no interior release on those back doors, so unless your friends let you out (mine did) there's not much for it but an undignified (yet extremely tactical) scrambling dive over the back seat to get to the real doors.
Thanks again for letting me out of the truck, guys.

Oh, and yes, that's a bullet hole or two above the flash-bang. It had been used, and I actually thought I'd bring it home and give it to my kids, who collect old used brass every time we go to a range. But in the end I figured it would probably cause me more hassle in the airport than I would care to explain, so I didn't bother. Now that I know that the TSA in Norfolk wasn't actually looking at the display of their mega-expensive CT scanner, I realize I probably could have brought whatever I wanted. They certainly didn't notice the steel-and-aluminum full-sized .45 handgun and three magazines in my luggage. Ah, well.

This is our other chariot. I didn't get to ride in this one, but I understand that radio reception was excellent. The only issue was that it apparently tuned in a lot of music that Robb liked, which meant that it tuned in a lot of music that the rest of the cohort found . . . . less entertaining.

Than pure, rusty boredom.

So to speak.

*Used with permission of Aaron Tippin. Don't believe me? Call him.

The Appleseed Issue

OK, so I've only woken up in the past three weeks or so to notice that Appleseed and bloggers hate each other. I'm a blogger, so I hate Appleseed. Don't do it. It's bad.

You didn't buy that, did you? That's why I like you. You're smart.

Before we start, let me get this out of the way: I haven't been to an Appleseed event. Ever.

What I have done is take an old Garand and go shoot NRA Highpower competition at a local 200-yard range. It was three-position stuff, standing, sitting and prone, with smaller targets to simulate going out to 600 yards (nobody told me until I'd been there a few times that these targets were not the standard 200-yard targets; I only knew that some targets were bigger than others and I sucked at the smaller ones.) I learned a lot doing this, but most of what I learned concerned how little I knew and how little skill I really had. It had a lot in common with USPSA "run 'n gun trigger-slapper" pistol competition in that regard, actually.

• I had very little idea how the rifle should be supported in any of the positions; I spent a lot of time shifting around.
• I knew I needed to let some breath out and quiet my breathing, but I wasn't very good at it.
• I knew I needed to find what the Appleseeders call my "natural point of aim" or NPOA, but again, I was bad at it, and knowing that I should be good at it didn't seem to be enough to get hits.
• I did not have a sling on the rifle, nor did I have any idea how to use one as an aid to marksmanship.
  

• I did not know how to adjust my sights, and I frankly thought doing so was more a crutch than anything--until I perforated the steel lane number sign about 13 times in one round with my loosey-goosey sights adjusted for about 50 yards. Windage was sweet, though.

There's more, but I see no reason to humiliate myself. It's my blog. My point is that an Appleseed shoot might really help me, because I DO want to shoot highpower competition, and I think it might be more fun if I sucked less. To argue that Appleseed is lacking because it apes highpower competition doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Are we against the Civilian Marksmanship Program now? They're pretty big on the three-position rifleman training over there, too, you know.

I understand the argument that you're not ready to fight a guerilla action against crack Imperial Stormtroopers (the crack ones still miss, but they don't give away their positions as quickly) just because you can hit man-sized targets out to 600 yards. But it IS a basic skill, and if you can't hit that target on demand at closer ranges, it won't matter much that you also can't hit a moving, camouflaged target on demand. I used to get this argument from karateka a lot. They'd argue that people who studied MMA, or BJJ, or whatever were limited in their approach. All we did was drill basics over and over and over. "That's beginners' stuff!" they'd tell me. "You won't want to go to the ground when the other guy has five friends waiting to put the boots to you while you're down there!"

Well, sure. That was true as far as it went. What that argument missed was that all the fancy stuff they were learning was being applied against air and unresisting "ukes"--people who knew their role was to let the technique work. They couldn't do their fancy techniques on demand against one opponent who was doing his best to stop them or pull off his own technique--but they were lecturing a man who could stop one opponent because he couldn't take five at once!

I feel that way about Appleseed. If you've mastered the basics and moved on, good for you. But I haven't. If you can do all the run 'n gun stuff with your rifle out to the ranges you want, then you might have no use for Appleseed. That's OK. We don't have to like the same stuff just because I'm crazy about you. Another common argument goes like this:
"Appleseed claims to be the gateway for new shooters, but it's way too hard and the wacko stuff about redcoats and the U.N. will scare new shooters away."

And that may be true. On the other hand, I've seen several new shooters introduced by way of a visit to a gun show, and if you've never met a true nutcase at a gun show, you ain't trying very hard. These people think guns and war and shooting people are neat, and they think that's what the rest of us are into, too. We'll never be completely rid of them. Sometimes, they may show up at Appleseed shoots, too--but then I've encountered racists and conspiracy theorists in many places. Ambulance services, tee-ball leagues, checkout lines at big box stores . . . .

For my own part, I think Appleseed may be aimed--very deliberately--at gun owners in about my stage of development. Think of their motto--something about "Don't be a gun owner, be a rifleman" isn't it? What does that mean?
It might mean that they think there are a lot of guys like me. Guys who owned several rifles and knew they couldn't hit anything past 100 yards to save their lives with a single one. Guys who owned battle rifles in calibers designed to put game or enemies down at extended ranges, but realized (or didn't, which would be far worse) that they'd have to rely on dumb luck to get hits at those ranges. Guys who could not really be called new to guns, but couldn't really be called "riflemen" or even "shooters" very honestly.

Monkeys with circular saws, in other words. People with finely-crafted tools who could do no more than admire the craftsmanship and think how cool it would be if they really knew how to use them to their full potential. So maybe what Appleseed is looking for is the transition between the casual gun owner who can't really shoot and the rifleman who has the basic skills to learn all that nifty combat stuff, or train for that elk hunt he's dreamed about, or have fun with his buddies on Sunday mornings at the highpower matches. And if somebody brings a new guy, he's welcome. And if somebody brings a really good "tactical" shooter, or a three-gun guy who wants to try Appleseed's way, so much the better. But if they can turn a wannabe into a rifleman--even if just being a rifleman is not enough to take out the invading Alien/U.N. hybrids--it's still better than not even being a rifleman.

So yes, I plan on attending an Appleseed event, hopefully sometime this fall if one happens near enough. I won't be going to blog about it or have my mind changed. I wanted to go before. I actually planned on going to a shoot in a town called Chillicothe (think Peoria--that's pretty close) but then I got invited to Blackwater and all my funds went there. Will I make Rifleman? I don't know. Maybe not, the first time. Will I be better at the end? Well, Breda says so, and I don't really see how a couple of days of intensive shooting with feedback could hurt me too much. Will I have time to sling up when the narcoterrorist U.N. mercenaries are marching on my hometown? I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

IF. If I come to it. That's what I meant. Stop looking at me like that.

Dangerous Levels of Common Sense Reported in VA

Things like this cannot be allowed to go on; they could spread to other states, including Illinois, if we're not careful. Would YOU want to live in a town where the police refuse to interview a suspect just because he's not doing anything illegal?

The PD is also encouraging its officers and dispatchers to get more details on the call before responding, such as this:

--

Caller: There is a man with a gun in the restaurant!

PD: What is he doing?

Caller: Just sitting there, eating dinner.

PD: Where is his gun?

Caller: In a holster on his right side.

PD: Is he yelling or threatening anybody? Is he waving the gun around?

Caller: No.

PD: What he is doing is perfectly legal in Virginia, thanks for calling.

--

From our friends at the VCDL, who should be role models for Illinois pro-gun groups.

Blackwater Blog Weekend: Daily Motivation II

The camera man above, looming above the safe-backstop steel walls of the shoot house, is the guy Todd Jarrett lovingly refers to as "Convict Mark." He's got a few piercings and a few tattoos, and he played the part of Bad Guy Who Gets Blasted By Todd Jarrett in a recent Crimson Trace promotional video. But this guy is a serious shooter and an all-around fun guy who did everything we did that weekend, often better, while also doing his job. He'd shoot us shooting, shoot whatever he needed for Downrange TV, and then put the camera down and go shoot steel. Rough life, huh? He also told the best stories; he and I traded tales of talking our wives into gun purchases one night in the lodge, but I couldn't keep up with his tales of trying to spin $7,000 trap guns from Olympic shooters as "bargains."

Don't worry; he didn't stay above those walls while we were shooting, as that would be unsafe.
He followed each of us through the shoot house instead. That scared the hell out of me, and I was the one with the gun. Now, I was moving so slowly that it was probably more like following the Titanic, so if I turned "suddenly" there was a lot of time to figure out where he was going to go. Not everyone was taking things at such a leisurely pace, though, and after one shooter who will remain nameless, Mark came out of the shoot house with wide, frightened-bunny eyes to declare "I saw Jesus!"

And here's what he did that I might not have: that was only the third or fourth shooter of the morning, so he went right in behind the next guy not five minutes later.

My favorite Mark the Convict story was the tale of the stuffed suit at an NRA convention who actually told him to leave and threatened to have him thrown out. At the time, Mark told us, he'd had purple hair, and I'm sure he had all his tattoos and piercings. He also had credentials and was actually doing his work at the convo, but that didn't impress Suit Guy, who stated with authority that "You don't represent what the NRA is about and we don't want you here."
(Remember, this is a guy who shoots with Todd Jarrett and Olympic shotgun athletes and Michael Bane . . . .)
The situation was resolved, apparently, when cooler heads told Suit Guy that he was risking The Displeasure of Sandy Froman. This apparently has the effect of raising the room's temperature to approximately the melting point of bluster, because he calmed right down.

I couldn't stop thinking how much Oleg would like to get this guy in front of a camera, but he was a little shy. Actually, he told me that if I put this one on the internet, he'd hunt me down and put an end to my internet foolishness. But mediocrity is its own reward; no one at Para or Blackwater seems to realize I even have a blog, so I doubt he'll see it, and if truth be told, I'm a little proud of it as portrait work.

Overheard in a Middle School

"That's some blog you've got up!" the big man told me. "We might have to talk, I don't know!"
He was smiling as he went out the door. Meet the Staff Night was beginning at Overachievers Middle School, and he'd only stopped in our room to get directions, but he'd caught me updating this site.

My poor co-teacher cringed. "Are you going to get in trouble?"
"No, I don't think so. That's Billy Dee's dad, isn't it?"
"So?"
"So, Billy Dee is the kid who stapled a picture of himself shooting a camouflaged AR-15 to his 'Things You Should Know About Me' poster, isn't he?"
"Oh, I don't think anybody did that," she said, giving me the sideways-through-the-eyebrows look that little Italian ladies give you when they think you're off your rocker.
"I'm not in here for that class, but it was right here on the front table a couple of days ago. I showed it to you. It was your assignment!"

A comfortable, if lengthy, silence ensued.

"Besides, did you see his dad's t-shirt? 'Tactical Explosive Entry School?' I don't think he's too worried about me."
"Do you really think there's a rifle on there? I did not see that! Where is it? I put them in the hall!"

We trundled out to the hall. We are not a graceful pair. She's pregnant and I'm me.

"There it is. See?"
"Ohmygod I didn't even see that! Reach up there and turn that around backward!"
"Are you kidding? You can't do that! You're not in Rockford anymore, lady. This is Illinois. That's not how things are done here. It's no big deal."
"Just turn it around so no one sees it."
"OK," I told her, curling the photo a bit. "But if he asks, I had nothing to do with it. There, feel better?"
"I just don't want to get into trouble. And I don't want him to get into trouble. You know how it is."
"Yeah. Should we do something about the big 'Shoting' title or the 'Watch out, I'll break all your clays' part? Or the giant mushroom-cloud explosion in the center of the paper?"

I have got to stop doing that. :D

Blackwater Blog Weekend: What Hath Para Wrought?

OK, it's Meet the Staff night here at Overachiever Middle School, so I don't have a lot of time until parents stream in. Let me just get this off my chest.

Tonight was IPSC night. Everyone was nice enough to let me go first so I could make it back here, because when The Principal asks why you didn't show up to meet the parents, "I wasn't out of ammo" only makes things worse. I shot it with my SIG and my FOBUS paddle.

The SIG did what it always does; the front sight settled on steel, I pulled the trigger, the steel fell down. Unexciting, but gratifying in a deeply personal way. The FOBUS holster, however, had changed. It used to be a perfectly adequate holster. Nothing to write home about, sure, but it worked.

Now it feels almost dangerous. The amount of effort that goes into re-holstering with that thing never bothered me before; I thought that was the way holsters worked. Now it feels like I'm fumbling. With a loaded gun with no safety. I don't like it.

Blackwater Blog Weekend: The Gun Blog .45

I know my reader has been anxiously waiting for me to write about The Gun, right? OK, here goes.

First of all, let's establish who I am and who I'm not. I am not a 1911 expert. I think Tamara almost severed a longstanding friendship when she found out that, prior to this weekend, my entire 1911 experience consisted of seven rounds through our old friend Son Tao's custom gun, and that was almost 8 years ago now. I like guns, and I like pistols, but I shoot a SIG and a Glock.

With that said, let's move on to the two big questions people were trying to answer this weekend:

1. What's this 1911 thing really like, anyway? Is any of the hype for real?

2. What's this LDA trigger really like, anyway? Is any of the hype for real?

If you were a 1911 guy, you were probably trying to answer number 2. If you were more familiar with the Glock/XD/M&P or some of the double-action guns out there, then you were probably spending your time on number 1.

Personally, I spent more time on number 1. The gun itself is a Commander-sized pistol, which I found a convenient size, but I can't really compare it to the full-sized 1911. Thanos, the President of Para-USA, spent a lot of time asking whether they'd brought the right size--he seemed concerned that the bloggers would write snarky things about the accuracy of the 4.25" guns, but he knew that most of us were most interested in concealed carry, so they thought that size made the most sense. I don't think anyone had a problem with the accuracy of the guns. After all, Todd Jarrett was shooting little bitty groups with any gun he picked up, and I don't care how good he is, he can't do that with a gun that isn't capable of that accuracy. Now, the consistency of the shooters is another matter and was certainly cause for consternation, but you can't blame the gun for that.

I liked the grip on the Para gun a lot. I'd always thought a 1911 clone would feel more or less like my P220 (they're both single-stack .45's, right?) but it's a much flatter, much thinner grip. I have large hands, but they're mostly palm with short, stubby coal-miner fingers, so there was a noticeable difference in the way the gun handled. I still couldn't reach the magazine release with my strong thumb without shifting my grip, but I've never found the .45 that will allow such a trick. Getting hits was easy if I did my part, and in a Jarrett class it's easy to know when you're not doing your part because he'll call it out to the whole class. "SQUEEZE THAT THING HARDER WITH YOUR WEAK HAND, DOUG!" he'll call, and you'll cinch down your grip and watch your group close up like magic. By that time, you don't even care that he called you Doug.

The sights were beautiful; a red fiber optic in front and big, black, serrated BoMar-style on the rear (what Tamara calls "Faux-Mars.") I did not experience the snagging and tearing others reported from the sight, but I could see on examination how it could be an issue. I'm not terribly worried about it because of my unique situation. When I compete with the gun, it shouldn't be a big deal. When I carry it, because of the Draconian gun laws of this state, I have to carry it inside a case; it won't have the chance to snag on clothing or tear skin in there. I found that the red fiber optic dot really sped up my shooting; I just followed the bouncing ball. Jarrett made a point of telling us up front that his specialty was not pulling a trigger fast, but acquiring targets fast. Unfortunately, I've never been good at either, but at least with the fiber optic I rarely lost sight of my front sight.

Reliability, in my gun, was great. We put between 800-1000 rounds through each gun, I would guess, under hot and dusty conditions. The ammo was much cleaner stuff than I load at home, but that's a lot of crud. I experienced zero failures to fire or eject, although the gun did fail to lock open on an empty magazine once on a slow string from 25 yards. I'm still not sure what happened there; maybe just a typical tight gun, but it never happened again. Late on Saturday, with the guns not having been cleaned or oiled beyond the factory lube, the gun began to balk at going forward into battery. At about the same time, it got harder to seat a magazine--the mag would seem to be fully seated, then pop out partway. I visited the sidelines, where Kerby Smith of Para added Lucas Gun Oil to the frame rails and the gun came back to life. We cleaned the guns at the end of that session, and I experienced no other malfunctions. I did twice manage to put the safety on during a string of fire as I tried to get my grip right, which was bothersome--but can you blame the gun for that kind of operator error? I wish I could, but I suppose not. Others did experience some malfunctions, notably Tamara and John Farquhar. Neither could be attributed to user error. Tamara's biggest problem was a consistent failure to lock the slide when empty in her first gun; her replacement piece didn't have that problem. "Probably a .45 slide stop in a 9mm gun," she opined to our Para rep. "That'll do it every time."
I nodded sagely and continued to load my magazine, although of course she could have blamed it on the Ferkelator and I'd have had the same reaction.

So what about question number 2? The answer, as Tattoo said when the Pend family visited Fantasy Island, is "It depends." If you're not familiar with the LDA, it stands for "Light Double Action" and is supposed to be like a double-action-only trigger with a light pull and a completely surprise break. Para-USA insists that this is not an attempt to make a DA 1911 clone, exactly, because the trigger is so revolutionary that it would make a big difference in most other platforms, too. Well, I liked the trigger, because it met my one and only criterion--I tried it and I got hits. Therefore it is Good. It's not true double -action as I think of it; for one thing, there's no second strike capability. For a guy like me, who shoots a DA/SA SIG in competition and wonders what all the fuss over the DA/SA transition is really about, the LDA is no big deal, just a really good double-action-style trigger. I will say I think it was a little smoother and certainly lighter than my P220, and that's saying something. Is it better than a single-action trigger on a 1911? Maybe. Do you work for a department that demands you carry a double-action? Do you work for a department that won't let you have a cocked-and-locked single action? Do you happen to like double-action triggers better? Are you trying to transition from the Glock or a simlar design? Then the LDA trigger might be a big deal for you. For me, it's just something else to try. After the weekend, I know it can shoot and do it well. Now I want to monkey with it for awhile and see if I come to prefer it. If you, like some of the other bloggers, are a 1911 guy who has good history with the single-action trigger on the 1911, I don't believe I would change that unless someone can show you a good reason. I don't see the LDA as the revolution that will sweep the single-action pistol aside. But I liked shooting it, I got hits with it, and it was safe. That's about all it takes to sell me.

So what didn't I like? Well, a lot of the bloggers griped that there was no need for the safety. I should probably be one of them; I carry guns with similar triggers in holsters with no safeties, and it works fine. Besides, I just told you that I put the safety on and killed my own shooting at least twice that weekend, right? Right, but here's the thing--I kind of like the safety. I'll even train myself to keep my thumb on top of it. You see, I hate re-holstering my weapon. It always seems to involve a little wiggling and experimentation, and the whole time, I'm trying to make sure all my clothing is tucked in and nothing can catch the trigger, causing me to shoot a tunnel throug my leg. With the manual safety, I can put the safety on and holster the weapon without worrying as much, and I like that peace of mind. All in all, I'd probably keep the safety, but if Para made a run with "slick sides" I believe they'd sell some.

Blackwater Blog Weekend: Overheard At The Range

I swear I am not making this up:

ME: "OK, now, nobody panic, but I just found this grenade pin in the Suburban and I don't see the grenade. I'm sure it's nothing."

Todd Jarrett: "Now, you got one of them bad bullets Dan made, here, so this one went a little low on you . . ."
ME: "You haven't seen that? That's the liver shot! Bas Rutten taught me that!"

ME: "I'm going to go home and tell the IPSC club, 'Hey, I really find I shoot a lot better when Todd Jarrett is yelling instructions in my ear and handing me magazines. Can this be arranged?' I think that's a reasonable request."

ME: "%#$&ING ZOMBIE, I KEEL YOU! RAWR!"

The most interesting thing about Todd Jarrett, to me, is his teaching. I don't know whether Jarrett has ever read "the research" as school administrators put it, but he does all the right things. The man is a professional educator, not a shooter sharing some tips.

• He's constantly positive. He'll take your diagnostic group, explain what caused each flyer (if he doesn't know, then you got a "bad bullet") and then give you his estimate of your "main group." Thus, with a flyer in the head and another at the navel, he figured I'd really shot a group of about 3.5 inches right in the upper chest on one exercise. Another shooter was struggling with plates. He missed five. He set up and took forever before toppling the last plate--and only the last plate. What did Jarrett say?
  "OK, now what did you do right on that last one? I'll tell you if you don't tell me."


• He's energetic. The man is going all the time. No class time is wasted. At most, you get enough of a lull to load magazines while he sets up the next stage. This can be a little overwhelming when he's really moving along, especially with ear protection in, and you wonder sometimes how you're expected to make it through the longest stages remembering what comes next. The answer is that Jarrett will be running beside you, his hand on your belt, yelling out what you do next.
  


• The class is always doing something. Jarrett does demonstrate, and as he says, being the instructor means you shoot as much as you want. But you will feel busy every moment, and watching him demonstrate is an active time. Everyone is learning by doing, and setups are done with an eye toward maximum reps for everyone. We've burned through a LOT of ammo.


• Every shooter in the class, regardless of ability, has a small but measurable goal at all times. There's one aspect of your stance or grip that Jarrett has been reminding you to watch, or there's a benchmark in terms of rounds on target, time, or accuracy. Today I was trying to get a full magazine out on target during 2-second drills. Some others, who were more comfortable with the draw, were trying to get a head shot with the last round. Some people were trying to get four rounds on target, others were just trying to keep all hits in the A zone. Each had his own indvidual goal, and each knew his goal.


• Aside from positive feedback, Jarrett clearly structures the class to make sure people end each section on a high note. He systematically builds confidence in students that way. If you struggled with the stage where you had ten things to think about at once and the movers and the plates drove you nuts, you still have a couple of simple close-range drills to do before dinner. They're not exactly easy stuff, but they're stuff you can do, and you end on that confident note. Good teachers do this because they understand students--that is to say, people--as well as their subject matter.
  

So the real question here is this: "Can I write this trip off as a professional mentoring opportunity?"

Blackwater Blog Weekend: Notes From Home

When I got to Virginia, I found a card in my luggage. The front has an obviously gay grizzly bear wearing a lavender neckerchief and hugging himself. He has a very happy smile. "Just sending you a little hug . . ." it says.
The inside says "Did you feel it?"
I did. Here's the rest of it.

Honey,
We will miss you. I love you!
Your Bride

DADDY I WUV YOU
SEAN

Dad have a good time in North Carolina shooting. Hope you win and tell me when you come hom. Like I say a lot: "Veni, Vini, Vinci." I will miss you,
Love you,
Donoy
Donovan

Kane your
best son
I love you
and I am glad
that you get
to do something fun
and you don't
have to worry,
we I will
behave
peace out

Blackwater Blog Weekend: Oh, Fine, A Little About the Shooting

Just a taste:


Todd Jarrett said I was "Looking pretty good over there for a young inexperienced guy."
David Hardy gave me a copy of In Search of the Second Amendment."
Tamara gave me a hug.
Blackhawk and Para gave me swag.
And my wife and children put a card in my suitcase to which I will devote its own post.